DigitalSENSE Business News:Remmy Nweke/
By June next year, the Universal Service Profession Fund (USPF) will be commissioning its 500 kilometres of fibre optic build out in some parts of Nigeria.
This is coming as USPF also plans to commission six projects across some of the nation’s universities within the same period.
Disclosing these to DigitalSENSE Business News, Wednesday in an interview in Abuja was the Secretary, USPF, Malam Abdullahi Maikano.
“We will be doing the commissioning of the 500 km fibre optic and the clusters I spoke about,” he declared.
Maikano also said that the fibre optic is being built in partnership with network operators with various degrees of undisclosed incentives from USPF to boost deployment of access to rural parts of the country.
The underlining tone behind USPF support for such infrastructure build out, he said, is not only for deployment or extending universal access to the rural community, but also to encourage affordability.
As said by him, with this support telecom operators would charge the same tariffs as in the cities.
Maikano further hinted that currently there are about 17 universities the USPF secretariat in Nigeria is assisting to provide broadband connectivity at the campuses to facilitate in making these universities more knowledge and learning friendly to students and academia.
“We would commission some of these projects, including the rural broadband,” he said, stressing that also some provision are being made to elevate some schools within this provision of universal access.
According to him, USPF and its partners are currently conducting test on these schools in readiness for the commission before June 2014.
Within the localities where these schools are located, he noted, there are about 10 schools under the test programme by USPF.
He emphasised that what schools of higher learning need at this age is connectivity based on ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) concept, mainly because most student now have laptops and smart devices to assist them in getting connected at any time and at anywhere.
Pix: Secretary, USPF, Malam Abdullahi Maikano.
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