LAGOS, NIGERIA – ipNX Nigeria Limited, a provider of infrastructure-based telecommunications and information technologies in Nigeria, announced that it will deploy a FTTH network covering three major commercial cities in Nigeria: Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. The network roll-out, which commenced in Q412, is expected to reach 500,000 households in 2015 and 2 million in 2017.
Services from the FTTH network will be launched under the brand name Fiber optic Service (FoS). FoS is currently available in selected areas of Lagos Island, Victoria Island, Ikoyi and Lekki. The service will be commercially offered to an initial 50,000 households and businesses within these areas as well as customers in Ikeja, Apapa and Surulere in November, 2013.
Quad-Play Service
ipNX FoS is a quad-play broadband FTTH service that will offer customers a combination of high-speed Internet, fixed telephony service, IP-television and video surveillance all bundled over the fiber optic network platform. This service, which is the first of its type anywhere in the country, is set to propel Nigeria into the select league of countries that can boast having a true next-generation broadband network.
Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) refers to a form of fiber optic cable technology that extends fiber optic cables from the network operator’s central office to a subscriber’s residence or business. Once in the subscriber’s home, the signal can be conveyed in any number of ways including wireless (Wi-Fi) or twisted pair to simultaneously reach various IP-enabled devices.
With guaranteed speeds starting from 4 Mbps, FoS allows users to access the internet at speeds at least ten times faster than 3G, WiMAX-4G or DSL while also making it possible to carry out multimedia communications such as cable television, video conferencing and video surveillance.
These are surely good signs for the ICT industry in Nigeria, especially for the Ministry of Communications Technology and the Nigerian Communications Commission, which have been in the forefront of the drive to grow broadband penetration in Nigeria, currently estimated at less than 5 percent. Industry analysts have attributed part of this low penetration to the paucity of local access infrastructure (commonly referred to as last mile), which is the gap that ipNX’s FTTH roll-out is going to help close.
ipNX FTTH initiative not only aligns with Nigeria’s recently approved National Broadband Plan, which not only targets FTTH deployments in major Nigerian cities, but also exceeds the country’s target of providing 2.4 Mbps to Nigerian consumers by the end of 2013.
