The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said it has begun conducting trainings, sensitising and collaborating with stakeholders to deploy 5G mobile service efficiently in the country.
The executive vice chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, disclosed this while responding to questions during a webinar on “Unlocking 5G Potential in Africa”, held on StreamYard, a live streaming studio recently.
The webinar was jointly organised by Qualcomm and Forum Global, under the auspices of Tech Policy Talks, instituted to power technology policy debates in the European Union. He said the trainings which are ongoing, precedes the planned the 5G spectrum auction coming up in Abuja on December 13th.
He said the commission is “expanding the spectrum of beneficiaries, especially engineers and others who will extend knowledge to others. We are emphasising enhanced broadband both in the wholesale and retail segments and we will also continue to sensitize people about the usefulness of 5G.”
He noted that NCC will continue with existing collaborations with sub-regional, continental and global partners to ensure we deploy 5G with effectiveness such as the West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Assembly (WATRA), the Africa Telecommunications Union (ATU) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
Danbatta in his presentation stated that 5G Technology transcends the telecom and ICT sector as it embraces every facet of human life. He provoked a debate that demonstrated Nigeria’s readiness to deploy 5G and by so doing emphasised the centrality of multistakeholder nature of the emerging conversations around the technology that have triggered great enthusiasm.
Danbatta asserted that the NCC efforts in readiness for 5G deployment with a final Information Memorandum for the 3.5GHz auction, and constitution of a committee to auction 3.5GHz midband spectrum.
Other constitutive initiatives of NCC includes licencing of Infrastructure Companies (InfraCos) to deploy Metro and Intercity fibre with at least one point of presence in each of the 774 LGAs in Nigeria, as well as opening up of Microwave and Millimeter wave, for instance, the 60GHz V-band, 70/80GHz E-band, 38GHz, and 42GHz, among others.
