NCC discovers 41 illegal Internet Service Providers

The Nigerian Communications Commission says it has discovered 41 unlicensed Internet Service Providers operating in the country’s telecommunications landscape.nccThe regulatory body made this known in its ”˜2016 Q1 Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Reports’, made available to theNews Agency of Nigeria in Lagos on Tuesday.It said there was compliance monitoring regarding the engagement of the unlicensed service providers, providing Internet/data access in the country.The NCC said following its surveillance and intelligence gathering, it discovered that some financial institutions engaged the illegal providers for their Internet and data services.According to the report, in line with the commission’s compliance processes, the banks were requested to provide the names and details of their service providers.The NCC stated, “Arising from this compliance check, the commission has discovered that 41 companies engaged were operating without the requisite authorisation.“To this end, the commission has commenced the necessary enforcement process in line with the provisions of the Nigerian Communications Act, 2003.”The report said that the telecommunications regulator’s activities were in accordance with Section 89 of the Nigerian Communications Act, 2003, which mandates the NCC to “monitor all significant matters relating to the performance of all licensed telecom service providers and publish annual reports at the end of each financial year.”Also, the Nigerian Communications Commission has started the process of licensing five companies to provide transmission infrastructure services in a bid to increase the broadband penetration in the country.According to a notice issued on its web portal, the regulatory agency said the process would culminate in the issuance of regional licences to five operators to be known as InfraCos for North-East, North-West, South-South, South-West and South-East zones.The InfraCo licensees, according to the regulator, will deploy metropolitan optic fibre infrastructure and associated transmission equipment on an open access, non-discriminatory and price-regulated basis in the regions.The NCC said, “The Open Access model has been examined and found to be an appropriate model for optic fibre backbone infrastructure in Nigeria to bridge the current broadband gap and deliver fast and reliable broadband services to households and businesses.“It is envisaged that this initiative will address the challenges of congested transmission network and also mitigate the challenges arising from infrastructure sharing and rights of way issues.“In this project, the Federal Government shall provide financial support in the form of subsidy, which shall be competitively determined to facilitate rollout obligations.“The Request for Proposal document detailing the commercial principles, key licensing conditions and technical specifications shall be advertised and made available shortly.”During the first phase of the InfraCo licensing process, the NCC had on January 28, 2014 announced the emergence of MainOne Consortium and IHS Consortium as two fibre infrastructure companies for Lagos and the North-Central zones.The licensing of five new companies in the second of phase of the exercise will bring the number of infrastructure companies operating in the country to seven.The InfraCos are part of the NCC’s initiatives to wire Nigeria and provide backbone infrastructure to make broadband Internet service ubiquitous in the country.Although terabytes of data capacity already exists in the country through various submarines cables landing in Lagos, there is a lack of capacity in-country as a result of lack of metropolitan cable in various states and towns across the nation.The InfraCos are expected to address this and enable last mile service providers to plug into the infrastructure networks and provide broadband services to consumers. 

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