Turn access rhetoric into broadband

 AT the 11th annual meeting of the Commonwealth Telecommunication Organisation (CTO)-organised forum which held in Abuja recently, the Nigerian Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, admonished member-countries to correct imbalances in access to connectivity by turning ‘rhetoric into broadband.’
This, to a very large extend is a call for access on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and access, according to industry parlance and more specifically within ICT for students, for instance, means having access to technology within the curriculum in different subjects and activities.
In the computer and telecommunication areas, especially it’s described as tools to access the knowledge in a meaningful and up-to-date manner.
For a rural dweller, access differs as the only concern could mean to just use technology at peripheral aspects, but for underserved to have access that could be meaningful, it must be knowledge-based in order to translate to economic gains.
Therefore, it is important to align the call by Mrs. Johnson for correcting the imbalances in access to connectivity to realistically close the gap between those who have and have nots, which entails access to electronic files, directories, computers or peripheral devices.
Also, Mrs. Johnson highlighted that redressing the imbalances, would avail the poor and unconnected to be released from the bondage of ICT marginalisation.
“We have also considered the challenges of rolling out the very expensive infrastructure that technology needs, of managing scarce resources to ensure ubiquitous, reasonably priced access,” she said, stressing that more concerted and well thought out efforts must be made to bring the previously unconnected to the Internet, just as aggressive roll out is canvassed.
In addition, Mrs. Johnson pointed out that motivating research in various aspects of human language technology such as speech synthesis, speech recognition, natural language understanding and machine translation for human-human and human-machine communication in none-traditional languages will help close the “last six inches of the last mile.”
Hence, organizations like the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and CTO, should as mattr of urgency formulate key policies to help bring well-placed pressure on the globally popular applications and Internet services with the view of ultimately benefiting the most from the high speed access that citizens want.
Its on this premise that the philosophy of the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) in Nigeria must be commended, following revelation by the Secretary, Mallam Abdullahi Maikano on their efforts to encourage rural deployment of ICT infrastructure, moreso services, through incentivized public-private partnership (PPP).
As said by him, USPF is providing subsidy and services in fibre optics across the six geo-political zones. For instance, USPF is expanding fibre optics in some parts of the North-East, South-South, South-West, South-East, and the North-Central, even as none of these operators is getting the same subsidy amount.
This call by Mrs. Johnson, would greatly help to harness relatively untapped resources, badly needed to bridge one of the most basic portions of the digital divide. And with the National Broadband Council now in place, it is hoped that better structured access strategies will be enthroned to make the call by Madam Minister, a realistic homecoming advocacy.
After all, charity must begin at home, therefore, Nigeria will be leading by example for other CTO member nations to follow.


... Making SENSE of digital revolution!