TheCable

Umar Danbatta, the executive vice-chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, says 40 million Nigerians are living without access to telecommunication services.

Speaking at the emerging technologies research and ICT forum that held in Kano on Wednesday, Danbatta said the service gap is brought about by the inability of the service providers to spread their services to rural areas.

Listing ways of addressing the situation, he said “One is to address the infrastructural deficit in the long term. In the short term, we need to deploy more and base transceiver stations,

“At the main time, the base transmitter stations are about 58, 000; and that is not enough for a population of about 190 million.

“At an average of 10 base transmitter stations per year, it is going to take this country 20 years to bridge the gap and bring telecommunications services to people living in rural areas.

“People living in rural areas don’t have the patience to wait for 20 years. So, we are looking at rural technology solutions that can bridge the gap in two years. This is on-going.”

For now, Danbatta said rural areas are being left behind as far as fibre networks were concerned.