USPF sets new 5year plan for ICT provision to underserved areas
Disclosing the new USPF SMP for 2013-2017 at a stakeholders’ forum in Lagos, USPF Secretary, Mr. Abdullahi Maikano said the new SMP was re-designed because the earlier SMP 2007-2011 was fraught with a number of barriers.USPF is a special fund set up by the Federal Government under the National Communications Act 2003, designed to provide […]
Disclosing the new USPF SMP for 2013-2017 at a stakeholders’ forum in Lagos, USPF Secretary, Mr. Abdullahi Maikano said the new SMP was re-designed because the earlier SMP 2007-2011 was fraught with a number of barriers.
USPF is a special fund set up by the Federal Government under the National Communications Act 2003, designed to provide telecommunications and ICT services to un-served, underserved and deprived groups and communities in the country.
He said, USPF was not happy with its performance in earlier SMP, “For three days at a retreat, we were looking at the number of things which we achieved in our first SMP, we were not happy about our performance.”
Maikano said USPF is currently doing some studies, “which we should have being done in the earlier SMP to ensure that the current one record resounding success.”
He said USFP were designed and defined using a ‘one size fits all’ approach making its intervention in some cases not directly addressing the specific needs of the beneficiaries, among others challenges.
Under the new targets he said 5,000 telecoms base transceiver stations will be deployed in various undeserved and un-served communities in Nigeria with plans to build 1000 per year.
According to him, to achieve the new targets, USPF will in the next two weeks come up with request for proposals from telecoms operators that will drive the infrastructure deployment, stressing the Fund would ensure there is transparency in the bidding process.
He said parts of USPF targets by 2017 is to also support the deployment of 15, 000 kilometres of fibre optic cables laying with an average of 3,000km every year; and the deployment of Internet Point of Presence, PoPs, in 25 clusters in five years with an average of five per year under the Fund’s Rural Broadband Internet (RUBI) scheme.