NCC’s PPP designed to address revenue leakage accruable to govt – Danbatta

Admin l Tuesday, July 27, 2021

 

LAGOS, Nigeria – Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, Professor Umar Garba Danbatta has said that the Public Private Partnership model adopted by the commission is designed to address revenue leakage accruable to the federal government from the telecoms sector.

Danbatta, who was speaking on the subject “Exploring Public Private Collaboration for a Robust Digital Infrastructure, Regulations, Investment and Policy”, during a virtual conference put together by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry(LCCI)  said that  in a concrete expression of belief in the centrality of PPP principles, the NCC, in November 2020, created a ‘PPP Unit’ as a division under its Special Duties Department.

“The Unit is overseeing the implementation of the NCC’s revenue assurance solutions (RAS) as well as the Device Management System (DMS) project. The two projects are being implemented in collaboration with private sector players”, he said, adding that while the RAS is intended to address the revenue leakages accruable to the government, through the NCC; the DMS on the other hand is intended to address the issue of type approval of telecom equipment and devices to ensure originality and standardisation because of the implication of substandard devices for health and quality of service.

Danbatta explained that DMS is also set up to tackle the problem of SIM boxing and call masking, which not only constitutes threat to national security but also a mark of anti-competitive practice in the telecoms sector and a basis for loss of revenue in tax remittances to the government.

The EVC noted that despite the various PPP interventions undertaken by the government and similar initiatives at the Commission, a number of challenges persist in the telecom ecosystem.

“These include multiple taxation and regulation, Right of Way (RoW) issue, vandalism, poor electricity supply, and lately worsening insecurity”, he said adding that all of these factors affect both the tempo and quality of infrastructure rollout by the private sector licensees, who are the main engine of growth in the telecom sector.

These challenges, he noted also affect the quality of telecom services and by extension the Quality of Experience (QoE) of telecom consumers.

Danbatta urged  the panel of eminent speakers to suggest better and more innovative PPP approaches that may be explored by the government towards making telecoms infrastructure safer, more resilient, more robust, and how to attract more investment into the sector.

He however assured that the next frontier for enriching digital economy globally, is through sustained investment in broadband or high-speed Internet access and that the Commission is committed to continuously engaging relevant stakeholders, both in the public and private sectors, in the country and beyond, in order to ensure that appropriate infrastructure befitting a modern digital economic system is available in the country to deepen government’s determination and commitment to total digital transformation of services in the country.

He said that the NCC is particularly noted for its faith in strategic collaboration and partnership as a central principle of its stakeholders’ relationship management and regulatory activities.

“Our daily regulatory processes are marked by consultations with a wide spectra of stakeholders as well as strategic partnering and collaboration with both private sector players and other sister public sector organizations”, he said, stressing that  following the liberalisation of the telecoms sector in 2001, the Commission has continued to facilitate investment inflow into the country’s digital space through licensing of many private sector players, who are deploying services in different segment of the nation’s telecom market.

“This has resulted in rollout of massive infrastructure ranging from the deployment of Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) and laying of thousands of kilometres of fibre optic cables to every nooks and crannies of the country. Hence, the sector has grown significantly in investment with significant access to an array of voice, data and other kind of enterprises.

“The Commission has also continued to enhance existing infrastructure through the licensing of a category of private sector players known as Infrastructure Companies (InfraCo), who are to deploy fibre optic cable on a wholesale basis across the country with broadband Point of Access (PoA) in each of the 774 Local Government Areas of the country”, he said, adding that the InfraCo scheme is running on a PPP arrangement, where the government provides a counterpart fund as a subsidy to stimulate faster, a more robust and resilient broadband infrastructure rollout across the country”.

While noting that broadband penetration in Nigeria has reached 45% at the moment, from less than 6% in 2015, he said that by stimulating digital activities in the country, there still exist access gaps which the Commission is making efforts to bridge.

According to him,  the hitherto existing access gaps of 217  identified in the country have been reduced to 114 through increased collaboration between the Commission and stakeholders in the telecom ecosystem.