Mr. Titi Omo-Ettu
| credits: web-konsult.com
A telecommunications engineer, Mr. Titi Omo-Ettu, has said that access to broadband by everybody is profitable to industry and governance.
Omo-Ettu, who is the former President, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, maintained that broadband access everywhere in the country was achievable.
He argued that the dividing line between the haves and the have-nots in access to broadband Internet was determined by the relative ease with which those who provided last mile services were accessible to investment funding.
Omo-Ettu said, ?This is because Nigeria has conquered the major hindrance normally caused by lack of understanding on the part of government, because today, all of us, government, operators and other service providers, are speaking the same voice.
?We all have agreed that access to broadband for everybody is profitable to industry and especially to governance, and Nigerians are easy to mobilise once we give them access to electricity and total communication.?
According to him, the broadband roadmap is one of the unusual issues on which government, its agencies, the private sector and industry activists are all saying the same thing and all agree on the direction of travel.
?Our industry liberalisation did not come on a platter of gold. It came on high bargaining and eventually by divine intervention because while the military operatives of the early 1990s did not agree with all arguments in favour of liberalisation of the telecoms sector, the head of government at the time switched to the side of a campaign for liberalisation and that was the joker that did it. The remaining is now history, both the good and the bad,? Omo-Ettu said.
According to him, top officials of government support the campaign while all the agencies of government are also part of the effort to make Nigerians have access to broadband resources.
?So, there is no way we will not break through once we tidy up on all the minor issues that are being worked upon at the moment,? he added.
Omo-Ettu used the broadband expansion programme, which he is coordinating, as an example of agencies of government being in agreement with the private sector as? a culmination of all that had been said at several conferences and summits.
?Somebody just now needs to press some buttons and the gates may just start opening up,? he said.
He explained that the programme was about fashioning a better means of accessing funds for the industry players who had the capability to deliver national backbone and last mile services but were hampered by lack of access to investment and operational funding.
The irony, he said, was that while foreign financial institutions were prodding foreigners to bring in large investments into our local market, the local financial institutions were not geared towards empowering small and medium enterprises,? which is the class to which those who brought services to the last mile belonged.
According to him, the broadband expansion programme is not a conference but an implementation of conference results.
The business workshop component, according to him, is designed to make all willing and capable service providers to jointly work out how best to take the next move, which is already identified.
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