Infraco: NCC approves Zinox for South-East, BRINKS for North east

ITREALMS:

The duo of Zinox Technology Limited and BRINKS Integrated Solutions Limited, have received approved from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to operate Infrastructure Company (Infracos) in South-East and North-East respectively, reports ITRealms.

Confirming this to ITRealms, the Director, Public Affairs at NCC, Mr. Tony Ojobo, said the approval has the nod of the board of the commission.

He also said that with this approval, the number of Infracos licenced so far is now four.

ITRealms recalls that over a year ago, MainOne Cable Company Limited, was licensed to provide services in Lagos, while IHS got its licence to cover the North Central geopolitical zone including Abuja.

The Infraco licenses, Ojobo further said were based on the NCC’s Open Access Model (OAM) in line with the National Broadband Plan (NBP) of (2013 – 2018).

According to him, by the provisions of the NBP, Nigeria is expected to attain 30 per cent broadband penetration by the end of 2018.

As part of the initiative to achieve this, NCC, as the driver of this process, has so far licensed a number of companies to stimulate broadband penetration.

“These include Bitflux Communications Limited (Bitflux) for 2.3 Ghz and MTN Nigeria for the 2.6 Ghz licences,” he said, noting that as at December, 2017, Nigeria has attained 22 per cent broadband penetration.

He emphasized that with the licensing of four Infracos; MainOne Cable, IHS, Zinox Technology and Brinks Solutions, there are three more licencees waiting for approval to bring total number to seven.

“These are for South South, North West and South West,” Ojobo assured.

Chuks Egbune/GEE

ITREALMS ... everything news digitally!

InfraCo: MainOne, IHS Consortium clinch license

ITRealms:

The duo of MainOne Company and IHS Consortium have emerged winners of their licenses for the Infrastructure Company (InfraCo) bid opened last year by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), reports ITRealms.

Disclosing this to ITRealms at a one-day industry Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Stakeholders Forum which held at Eko Hotel at the weekend, the Executive Vice Chairman, Dr. Eugene Juwah said MainOne won the license for the Lagos and IHS Consortium won the license for the Lagos North-Central respectively.

ITRealms reports that four operators comprising MainOne, Zinox Telecom, HIS and Trussnet vied for the Lagos region license which NCC divided into two for ease of coverage, since Lagos is the commercial nerve center of the national and center of communication investment in the country.

The four companies had tendered bids for the license in 2014 and in response to a question at the 4^th Industry ICT Stakeholders Forum, Juwah told ITRealms the have concluded and the letter of award of licenses should be on dispatch to respective winners as at the time of filing this report.

This he said, follows the conclusion of the evaluation by NCC, which was delayed due to several reasons, including the mild-break out of Ebola in the country by third quarter of 2014, which has since been contained.

ITRealms recalls that NCC had revealed it would be licensing seven InfraCos for the country, stressing that six will be for the geo-political zones each in Nigeria, while Lagos will have one operator because of its peculiarity.

The Lagos and North Central regions, NCC said would come in the first phase of the licensing, while other five zones namely the North East, North West, South East, South West and South South have been lined up for the second phase.

+Remmy Nweke +MainOne Cable @IHS

ITREALMS ... delivering news for ICT4D