Pantami, Danbatta Vow Enabling Environment For Telecom Investors

The minister of communications and digital economy, Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami and the executive vice chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has vowed to ensure that the federal government’s regulatory policies that will create enabling environment in the ICT sector.

The two spoke during a stakeholder consultative forum on emerging technologies with the theme: Regulatory Roadmap for the IoT Ecosystem and the public presentation of two books on ICT written by the minister.

The two books entitled: ‘Datafication of Society to Foster an Internet Economy’ and ‘Cybersecurity Initiatives for Securing a Country’, The books emphasize key aspects of emerging technologies, namely datafication and cybersecurity

The minister said Internet of a Thing (IoT) is one of the most important components of the Fourth Industrial Revolution particularly disruptive technologies. He said IoT has brought about data application because of the inter-connected smart devices, where one device is connected to the other.

Things like Artificial intelligence, robotics quantum computing, cloud computing, autonomous vehicle, augmented reality, virtual reality, fifth generation technology, cyber security, and cloud computing are part of the Fourth industrial revolution, emerging technologies or disruptive technologies and the virtual world are part of IoT.

According to Pantami, statistics from the International Data Corporation (IDC), stated that by 2025 there will be around 46.1 billion IoT devices that are going to be interconnected globally, and through this connection, there is high probability that the data to be generated will be up to 79.4 zettabytes.

The minister said since 2019, the National Digital Economy Policy, and Strategy (NDEPS) for a Digital Nigeria has been creating a developmental regulation to be sort of flexible not in any way to restrict unnecessarily the sector, but rather to support development.

“Nigeria could be the first country to come up with regulatory policy in that regard and this is just to provide enabling environment for the sector to grow not to restrict unnecessarily, as it is been found in other places,” he added.

The EVC of NCC, Prof Danbatta, on his part, said in line with our Strategic Vision Plan (SVP) 2021-2025,  the Commission has continued to conduct studies on emerging technologies and their spectrum and regulatory requirement to ensure adequate availability of spectrum for current and future use devoid of any harmful interference.

“ As you may all know that the telecommunications industry is a dynamic industry, therefore, to keep abreast with developments in the industry, the contributions from all stakeholders are critical.

“With the advent of 5G technology, we are going to witness another dimension in the IoT Ecosystem as 5G technology is going to enable Massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC). GSMA Intelligence forecasts that IoT connections will reach almost 25 billion globally by 2025 and with this pace of growth, it has become imperative to prepare for the Regulation of this important technology.

“ We at the commission are conscious of the importance of participatory Regulation through strategic partnership with government and non-government actors, it is for this reason therefore, that you are all invited here to provide comments and inputs on this very important topic,” he said.