The Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami has said that the February 16th, 2020 set for the Nigerian National Broadband Plan Committee (2020-2025) will not be extended.
Dr. Isa Pantami said this on Thursday, 6th February, 2020 during a brief stop at the 2020 – 2025 National Broadband Planning Committee Meeting in Abuja.
He challenged the Committee to come up with a possible solution for the Federal Government to achieve 100% broadband penetration by 2025.
Pantami also asked them to concentrate more in ensuring 4G penetration and be time conscious as there are other 10 majors issues to be addressed aside Broadband penetration.
He also suggested the Committee comes up with two options for the Federal Government to make use of.
It will be recalled that the Committee was Inaugurates in December, 2019 by the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami on behalf of the Federal Government at the Transorp Hilton Hotel in Abuja.
Inaugurating the Committee which comprises members from the private and public sectors, the Minister stated that the work of the committee will go a long way in supporting National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy of Nigeria which include critical role for Federal, States and Local government in the country.
He said digital economy is strategically dominating world economy and Nigeria cannot promote and develop it without Broadband in place and charged the committee to come up with strategy to penetrate underserved and unserved areas in the country.
Pantami said that the Broadband plan 2013-2018 has expired and urged the committee to look at the target that has not been achieved and challenges that are affecting Broadband penetration. He directed them to also look into many more challenges that have not been stated previously and see how we can join hands and resolved them collectively.
“It is because of this that we have come up with this very important strategic committee that would work on our National Broadband Plan for 2020-2025”.
He urged the members of the committee to maintain objectivity in their discussion/deliberation; to rightly identify our national priority and preference because we cannot do everything at the same time, He admonished that there is nothing personal in the assignment but to honour the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians.
Pantami advised the committee to look at the recently released report and investigation by Huawei and Alliance 4 Affordable Internet (A4IA) 2013-2018 to extract useful information that would help the committee.
No comments:
Post a Comment