The Federal Government of Nigeria established the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) to facilitate extension of telecommunications services to underserved and unserved communities. The law establishing the USPF i.e. Nigerian Communications Act (NCA) 2003, empowers it to promote widespread availability and usage of network services throughout Nigeria by encouraging the installation of network facilities and the provision of network services to institutions and to unserved and underserved areas and groups in Nigeria. Dr Johnson who is the Chairman of USPF disclosed that the USPF is initiating various programmes and projects to facilitate the deployment of ICT infrastructure and services which are designed to extend ICT and other telecommunications services to people living in rural areas, where Operators are unlikely to provide services. One of the programmes according to Dr Johnson designed by the USPF to extend telecommunications services is AMPE (Accelerated Mobile Phone Expansion) Programme which ensures the extension of mobile telephony services to unserved and underserved communities. The AMPE Programme is implemented in collaboration with Network Operators. The Base Transceiver Station (BTS) is one project under the AMPE Programme through which the USPF provides subsidies to Operators to extend telecommunications services to unserved communities. Dr Johnson disclosed that while this contributes to the tremendous growth of the telecommunications industry witnessed in the last decade, the Federal Government, as part of the transformation agenda, would not lose focus on an estimated forty million (40m) Nigerians that still lack access to ICT services. She disclosed that in order to strategically address the ICT needs of these people, the USPF has, based on a Geographical Information System (GIS) study, created ICT Gap Clusters of areas that are unserved or underserved. Each Cluster has the requisite attributes – population estimates, size, major towns, main economic activities/occupation, institutions, vegetation type etc. that would assist USPF in designing projects that address peculiar ICT needs of each community. In addition, Operators/Implementers would utilize the information in creating the appropriate service-mix for each Cluster. The ICT Gap clusters is an innovative way of ensuring that all communities benefit from the immense opportunities that ICT brings and are able to effectively participate in the new digital economy. Through the utilization of the ICT Gap Cluster model, the USPF plans to ensure that universal coverage is achieved in the next two – three years.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 14:36:31 +0000
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