Countries must collaborate to make Internet connectivity affordable — Pepper

 

Dr. Robert Pepper

Vice-President, Global Technology Policy, CISCO, Dr. Robert Pepper, in this interview with EVEREST AMAEFULE, says rolling out Internet Exchange Points is one of the tools for driving down the cost of Internet connectivity in the country

 What is the role of CISCO in the Alliance for Affordable Internet?

We were there at the very beginning of the conversation with other companies and the governments to create the alliance. So we were one of the founding participants to create the Alliance for Affordable Internet. We work with the advisory committee for the alliance. Part of the alliance agenda is a research track. There are many things we need to understand about the best practices. What are countries doing that appear to be working? We will have countries to share the best practices so that we can actually bring down the cost of the Internet everywhere. This is in brief how we have helped to found the Alliance for Affordable Internet and we are actively engaged in the development of the agenda.

 When you say affordable Internet; what exactly do you mean? What is affordable?

This is one of the biggest issues we looked at as part of the United Nations’ Commission for Broadband. We decided as part of the UN broadband commission’s goal (which is broadband everywhere) to have the price of broadband in not more than five per cent of the average monthly income of a household. Why that? It is because we have looked across the world; what is affordable is not a single number because different economies have different levels of income. So if you take a number that may affordable in Europe, it may still be extremely high in Nigeria. This is looking at it as a percentage of a household’s monthly income and we looked at five per cent as the threshold. The average in developed countries is 1.7 per cent of average household income. In some of the countries in Africa, the average is 15 per cent to 30 per cent. That is not affordable. So the goal is bringing down the price to no more than five per cent of the monthly household income.

In the United Nations, we have had some success where we have seen some of those numbers declining in some countries. In every year, more countries have come within the five per cent. The other thing that is encouraging is that more countries are coming below 10 per cent range. So we are on the right track but we are not yet there.

 What is the number for Nigeria?

We have to go back and look at that. I don’t have it off hand. I don’t remember, honestly. The UN commission actually publishes those numbers.

 What is CISCO doing specifically in Nigeria to reduce the cost of Internet connection?

For many years, we have been working with both the Nigerian Communications Commission and the Ministry of Communications Technology. We are quite lucky that the NCC for many years has had a policy of competition. One of the things that we know is that competition brings down prices. If you look at decisions that have been made over the last decade in Nigeria especially with the granting of licences to GSM operators and if you look at the adoption of mobile versus fixed lines; there has been a huge growth. The next step to that will be spectrum for 3G and spectrum for 4G. NCC is working on that. Separately, government and the ministry as well as the NCC have had a very significant impact in bringing in more undersea cables to Nigeria. You remember not long ago, the price to connect backbone was extremely high. As at now, Nigeria is one of the countries in Africa that have the most undersea cable connections – some of the best bandwidth from the undersea cables in Africa are in Nigeria. These were some of the decisions that came from the government to open up and provide access to the landing stations. Those are decisions that came from conversations that we have had for many years with the regulators and policy makers and government in Nigeria. There are still more to be done and we are discussing with NCC and Minister Johnson. How do we now get broadband to the rural areas? Having broadband in rural areas, we can then begin to talk about how we drive down the cost. First, there needs to be investment to extend connection. That is the only way we are going to serve underserved communities. The primary way that this is going to happen is working with service providers.

We have actually been working with service providers to be able to extend connection. As we have said earlier, bandwidth cost has now crashed as a result of the four undersea cables that we now have in the country. The next thing that needs to be sorted out is the issue of last mile. In some remote places, there is no Internet connectivity but I do know that part of the broadband policy of the nation is bringing Internet connectivity to all the nooks and crannies of the country.

 Why have you taken Ghana and Nigeria as reference points in your studies?

The reason is that both Nigeria and Ghana earlier than other countries in the region had policies to promote mobile; opening up cable landing stations; bringing in fibre from the rest of the world plus the fact that both countries, especially Nigeria, are growing economies. Nigeria is a youthful country. If you look at the demographics, countries that have a large population of young people with university education; these are the economies that are growing and that are going to be leaders in their region. If you look at 170 million people in Nigeria; the Gross Domestic Product growth opportunities are enormous. The opportunities for Nigeria are really limitless. So it is a great opportunity. Nigeria had also been a country in the past that had been forward looking when it comes to technology.

 What is the latest development on the problem of last mile connectivity in Nigeria?

It is s decision that government has to make. What are the benefits that Nigeria has to get from Internet connectivity? We have better access to education and we have better access to healthcare. Yes, people have invested to bring undersea cable to Nigeria; and from a wholesale angle we have seen the price of broadband access come down significantly. The challenge is: now that the cables have landed in Lagos, how do we move the bandwidth to other parts of the country? Who is going to bear the cost to get it there? We now have to look at the risks and rewards because assuming somebody bears the cost, what is the immediate impact on the population? We have 170 million people. Over 70 per cent of the population is below 30 years. So really we have a young vibrant population that even in remote parts of the country that can have better access to education. This means we can be a force to be reckoned with. Nothing says the country cannot grow faster than it is doing now. Part of the things that can push for that growth is how fast we can push Internet from the city to the remote areas.

Part of the problem is the middle layer. Even when you are able to push the backbone from Lagos to Abuja, you still have the problem of how you are going to push from the city to the small towns around the second and third tier towns and then to the villages. Everybody recognises that is the way we have to go. We have had conversation with both NCC and the ministry. They totally understand that and so the question is: do wehave those core networks to extending all the way up all the benefits get to the people. Another very important thing that can be done to begin to lower the cost is rolling out Internet exchange points. Internet exchange points where different Internet service providers connect to each other actually helpbecause they lower the cost of going from one network to another network.