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Nigeria among top three emerging broadband markets

By Adeyemi Adepetun
13 May 2015   |   2:52 am
THE Global Connectivity Index (GCI) on West Africa 2015 has placed Nigeria among the top three emerging broadband markets. The GCI, which was released at the Huawei Cloud Congress (HCC) in Lagos, covered 50 countries including Nigeria, among others and 90 per cent of the world’s population

BroadbandTHE Global Connectivity Index (GCI) on West Africa 2015 has placed Nigeria among the top three emerging broadband markets.   The GCI, which was released at the Huawei Cloud Congress (HCC) in Lagos, covered 50 countries including Nigeria, among others and 90 per cent of the world’s population.

The 2015 GCI sheds light on the growing opportunities around the world.   The index noted that majority of developed countries are “Leaders”.

It ranked the United States highest among surveyed countries with Sweden, Singapore and Switzerland leading the GCI.   Chile, China, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) lead the developing markets, with all three ranking in the high teens to low twenties overall.

According to the GCI, developing market leaders are characterized by strong mobile adoption and overall access that is often comparable to developed markets, while typically lagging behind in terms of data center investment and other core elements of ICT infrastructure.

It disclosed that data centre investment by developed countries was three times that of developing countries, which is the major catalyst of cloud proliferation as “the edge does not exist without the core.”   Ranking 47th in GCI, Nigeria is among top three emerging broadband markets.

The Index noted that Nigeria has a small fixed base but huge potential in the uptake of mobile products as it is one of the world’s largest mobile subscriber markets and offers impressive opportunities primarily in the mobile broadband space, where rapid m-Commerce uptake is driving market growth.

Nigerian’s are the highest number of Internet users in Africa all of which accumulates to an improved potential within the country. It will be recalled that Nigeria finished 2014 with eight per cent broadband penetration, as disclosed by the Minister of Communications Technology, Dr. Omobole Johnson, whose soon to end tenure, had set a 30 per cent broadband penetration by 2018 and five-fold increase in Internet access across the country through the National Broadband Plan.

Overall, the 2015 GCI showed that 20 per cent growth in ICT investment will increase a country’s GDP by one per cent. It also identified five enablers of digital transformation – data centres; cloud services; Big Data; broadband; and the Internet of Things.

These technologies, according to Huawei represented the targets that stakeholders should focus their investments on in order to most efficiently transform their economies for the digital age.

Huawei emphasized three recommendations for a better connected West Africa. These includes increasing data centre investment; developing economies need to moving from investing in supply to building demand and learning from developing countries’ success to become global GCI leaders.

The study informed that all economies are digitizing, and provided a guide of who’s ahead, who’s behind, why, and who is poised to move up or back.   President of Huawei Western Africa Region, Peng Song, said: “The Global Connectivity Index is not merely a ranking of countries.

We see it as a platform to partner with policymakers and enterprise leaders to identify, harness, and create new digital economy opportunities with the aim of building a Better Connected West Africa.”

Huawei forecasts that by 2025, as many as 100 billion connections will be generated globally, 90 per cent of which will come from intelligent sensors.

It stressed that this increase will be attributed to enterprises becoming enabled by the internet. According to it, by leveraging connectivity to streamline business processes, reduce costs and improve efficiency, enterprises will drive innovation and move the focus from a consumer driven Internet to an industrial one.

Peng added: “Make IT simple, make business agile. It is an amazing era with rapid growth and data explosion. In this dynamic environment, Huawei will continue to invest in IT industry, emphasizing on the concept of being integrated, customer-centric and providing customers with innovative, differentiated, leading-edge products and solutions. “

Huawei launched the FusionCloud Solution and OceanStor V3 Converged Storage solutions at HCC. Accenture, Etisalat, Fidelity bank, Intel, SAP and other Huawei partners shared the cases of deploying Huawei enterprise business solutions to enable the business success.

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