Whereas North America's 340 million population is heavily covered with about 74 per cent having access to the Internet.
Since Internet and technology associated with it is a most potent denominator for economic and social equilibrium, it explains why the African continent still moves its economy at a snail speed.
Internet usage statistics published by Internet World Stats indicates that as at September 30, 2009, only 1.7 billion of the 6.7 billion global population has access to the Internet.
Besides Africa's 67 million or 6.8 per cent and North America's 252.9 million or 74.2 per cent, the statistics showed that of Asia's 3.8 billion, 738 million or 19.4 per cent has access to the Internet.
Europe's 803.8 million has 418 million connects or 52 per cent.
Oceania/Australia's 34 million people have 20 million connected representing 60.4 per cent penetration. Latin America/Caribbean's 586 million people have 179 million connected or 30.5 per cent.
Middle East's 202.6 million population has only 57 million people connected representing 28.3 per cent.
Curiously, Nigeria, which is said to be Africa's primus interpares in telecommunications growth and penetration has only 11 million of its 149 million population connected to the Internet. This represents only 7.4 per cent of the population.
More worrisome is that only 500 broadband Internet subscribers exist for now according to the study.
However, to improve life, experience rapid growth, the penetration of adequate broadband facilities could serve as an enabler for faster development of Nigeria and indeed the continent. It must be noted that Internet broadband has now become an economic indicator used in measuring development among countries.
Broadband infrastructure and connectivity provide a unique opportunity not only to provide an immediate economic surge, but also offer long-term benefits across almost every aspect of our communities. As need and opportunity converge, there is no better time to begin seeing these benefits than now.
In an interview with The Guardian at a telecommunications forum in Lagos recently, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Ernest Ndukwe, said with the world now a global village where ICTs have direct impact on nation's ability to improve the economic well being of her people and compete globally, there is need for sustainable platform for this to be achieved.
According to Ndukwe, there is need to ask ourselves how well we have fared in comparison with other regions of the world in providing access to this vital infrastructure for our people, adding that from the performance record so far, Nigeria, no doubt has cause to celebrate eight years of tremendous growth in the ICT sector.
However, he said while Nigeria and other African countries may be celebrating increase in access to and the use of basic telephone services, the more advanced countries are increasing access to Internet and broadband at such an exponential rate.
He said broadband is no doubt an accelerator of social and economic development in the modern world with its applications enabling and facilitating economic and social services such as public safety, national security, telemedicine, e-government, distance learning, utility applications and so on.
Ndukwe stated that there is already a growing broadband divide between Africa and the rest of the world, stressing that there is therefore an urgent need to initiate national and regional policies aimed at promoting ubiquitous broadband deployment.
He identified access challenge as the main limitations to faster deployment of Internet in the continent, "Access is fundamental. Without access there is no Internet. Internet is not real and cannot be experienced, used or valued by the individual who does not have access.
"Access for me means being connected to the Internet at the right speed and at the right price and linked to the right content at the right time and right place", said Ndukwe.
The out-going NCC's EVC added that many developing countries lost out on the telecom revolution that happened before the advent of mobile communications, when the rest of the world developed copious installed capacities for fixed line transmission and last-meter cable infrastructure, stressing that with the coming of Internet, the cable infrastructure became access infrastructure in those more developed countries for linking homes and offices to the Internet employing ADSL technology, thus for many developing countries today mass-market last-meter access to the Internet has to be wireless.
Ndukwe said one of the major task before the commission in year 2010 would be on growing Internet and broadband in the country, stressing that this is at the forefront of their plans because that is where the country still needs a lot of improvement because we have done a lot about voice communications, but there is still a lot to do with data, Internet and broadband. "We have a 50 per cent teledensity today. We need to move it to 100 per cent."
However, for the growth in Africa, there is a confluence of indicators that suggest that for the first time in more than a decade, broadband growth in the African continent may be on the verge of truly taking off. The list is long; last mile competition, international gateway licensing, submarine cable deployments, domestic fiber backbone deployments, unified licenses, improvements in radio spectral efficiency, economies of scale on 3G radio equipment, emergence of EVDO and WiMAX, increased Internet usage from a younger population, increased availability of capital, Tier 1 mobile players aggressively getting into the Internet business and last but not least, Huawei.
According to an International Telecommunications Union's (ITU) report for 2009, there has been tremendous growth in mobile subscription in Africa putting it at 246 million subscribers, but that there has not been any commensurate figure from the Internet users.
The report noted that though the number of Internet users has also grown faster than in other regions, but that despite the rapid growth "Africa's ICT penetration levels in 2009 are still far behind the rest of the world and very few African countries reach ICT levels comparable to global averages".
It says fewer than five per cent of Africans use the Internet, and fixed and mobile broadband penetration levels are negligible.
"Indeed, the digital divide between the African region and the rest of the world is much more pronounced than the divide within the region, with very few countries reaching ICT levels comparable to global averages."
The research shows that African countries are facing a number of challenges in increasing ICT levels. These include the lack of full liberalisation of markets and the limited availability of infrastructure, such as shortage of international Internet bandwidth. "In addition, prices for ICT services remain very high compared to income levels."
On the question of infrastructure, the report says there are practically no cable networks and many countries face a shortage of international Internet bandwidth.
"As a result, fixed broadband penetration is low and broadband prices are beyond the reach of the majority of the population. The large majority of countries (22 out of 32 included in the ICT price bracket) have fixed broadband prices that correspond to more than 100 per cent of their monthly GNI (gross national income) per capita".
In other words, the monthly rental of broadband costs more than most people earn in a month.
"Mobile broadband is in its very initial stage but has shown higher growth than fixed broadband and may be Africa's most promising broadband access technology of the future."
Important progress in the mobile sector includes increased access to mobile networks from 25 per cent population coverage in 2000 to 58.5 per cent in 2008 and a mobile cellular penetration rate of 31 per cent in 2008. Mobile subscriptions today are also more evenly distributed across countries than they were some years back.
"These achievements have been greatly supported by the development of mobile services and applications that meet the requirements of users in the region, such as prepaid services, text messaging, and m-banking. Despite this important progress, the region needs to make an effort to upgrade its infrastructure and achieve mobile cellular levels similar to the rest of the world," says the report.
The analysts believe there are two main areas of ICT policy concern for the region: "(a) to sustain mobile cellular and Internet user growth and extend access to lower-income segments of the population; and (b) to take the necessary steps to enable greater broadband access."
In an interview with The Guardian, the President, Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), Mr. Lanre Ajayi, said that the broadband penetration is rather too small in the country.
Ajayi said: " Looking at the penetration of Internet access, a recent study indicated that there are 10 million Internet users, compare the figure to over 60 million telephone users in the country, you will agree that it is relatively poor. There is no reason why everyone that is able to use phone should not have access or be able to use the Internet. That goes to say that the Internet penetration in Nigeria is low."
Even at that, he said out of the 10 million, only a fraction of it were able to access Internet at a broadband space, stressing that lots of people access Internet through a dial-up, which is a narrow band. He said accessing Internet through broadband is low and that in most cases the service is limited to the cities - Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.
He said obviously Nigeria needs more wholesale broadband to be alternatives to SAT-3 and that more fibre optic initiatives should be encouraged, stressing that incentives should be provided to encourage the roll-out of affordable broadband within the country in a widespread and sustainable manner.
The reasons for the low penetration, according to Ajayi, who is also the chief executive, Pinet Informatics is simply because the international/ Internet bandwidth is still fairly expensive, stressing that was so because the exchange point in Nigeria is not that effective. He said another major hiccup was lack of adequate national infrastructure. He said that is one of the reasons why the country's Internet exchange is not effective is simply because there is no fibre linking our cities together through which we can aggregate all our traffic in the Internet exchange point, stressing that people are forced to use the satellite, which is more expensive and has several technical challenges, including high latency and so on.
Buttressing this claim, the Country Manager for Motorola in Nigeria, Rapheal Udeogu, said the poor penetration of broadband in Africa was as a result of the poor economic landscape that has been the order of the day in Africa.
According to him, for the continent to be at par with other countries of the world, there is need to improve the infrastructure deficit and enhance human capacity in the continent. He stressed that Nigeria as an emerging economy, with abundant human and natural resources, only need to harness the potentials inherent in all these and put up a platform that will grow and sustain it.
He said for IT development in Africa, it goes beyond the point of laying fibre cables, but creating the right legislation that will drive the content, stressing that in Nigeria some companies are laying cables, but that there is need to ensure it functions appropriately.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sonny Aragba-Akpore and Adeyemi Adepetun
Quelle/Source: The Guardian - Nigeria, 10.02.2010
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