FG plans Internet connection for varsities, others by 2025

The Federal Government is planning to connect all tertiary institutions in the country to the Internet in the next five years.

The government also plans to reach 50 per cent of secondary schools and 25 per cent of primary schools in the country with Internet connection by ensuring that institutions are located within five kilometres of fibre infrastructure or a fixed connection.

The plans to achieve these are contained in the Nigerian National Broadband Plan 2020-2025.

As part of the plans, one general or major hospital per local government area as well as federal medical centres across the country would have access to Internet connectivity in the next five years.

Stakeholders in the telecommunication industry also plan to increase internet download speed from a minimum of three megabytes per second in urban areas this year to 25mbps while delivering a minimum of 10mbps in rural areas by 2025.

They estimated that extensive deployment of fibre optics infrastructure and connection to towers would help the country to achieve 90 per cent 4G coverage in the next five years.

According to the NBP, another area of focus is the need for denser fibre network in order to aggregate fibre from base stations and across metro areas.

Speaking at the unveiling of the plans in Abuja, President Muhammadu Buhari, urged mobile network operators to ensure full attainment of the targets set in the new National Broadband Plan 2020-2025 by giving special attention to the un-served and underserved areas when deploying telecom services.