Is NEPA the key to fixed broadband in Nigerian metro areas?
The National Broadband Plan aims for 25Mbps speeds in urban Nigeria by 2025. Can power distribution infrastructure help achieve this?
In the Nigerian National Broadband Plan 2013–2018, the definition of broadband connectivity was an internet connection with speeds of at least 1.5Mbps. This may seem laughable now, but it shows how dire the situation was in 2012 when the report was being drafted. In what can be seen as an acknowledgement of too low a target in the first plan, the new Nigerian National Broadband Plan 2020–2025 published last month shows that the target was indeed met (mean speeds of 1.56Mbps in 2018) but the digital divide between Nigeria and the rest of the world remains. The new goal is an average of at least 25Mbps in urban areas and 10Mbps in rural areas by 2025. This may be repeating the first mistake as 25Mbps is not exactly very fast today and in a post-COVID 2025 where work will be more distributed, it may be snail speed.
The report summarizes the current Nigerian internet landscape as below:
The diagram above tells us a few things. One is that practically all of the last mile connectivity for consumers is via mobile; 99.8% of Nigerian internet users access the internet via 2G, 3G or LTE. Second, that the middle-mile distribution infrastructure — that takes the traffic from the mobile tower upstream — is mostly microwave, and there is low fibre penetration in this layer. These are the main constraints to better internet speeds in Nigeria, particularly in metro areas because:
- Spectrum is a limited (and expensive) resource that network operators have only a little of. In dense areas, customers have to share the narrow band assigned to their network provider with other users.
- Radio frequency (RF) based links are inherently less robust than wired connections. Weather conditions, presence and location of physical obstacles and relative position of mobile equipment easily affects the performance of radio networks.
The plan recommends a suite of policy actions to target these constraints, mostly in the middle-mile network. The actions include simplifying the process of getting fiber build permits, having a single harmonized right-of-way fee across all states and a dig-once policy where all newly constructed roads have ducts for fiber. The plan aims to have at least 60% of mobile towers connected to fibre by 2025, from approximately 10% today.
The plan seems to have given up on fixed broadband-to-the-home, and perhaps for good reason. The fiber reach of the population in Nigeria, defined as the percentage of the population that is within 5km of a fiber network is approximated at 39%. The difficulties involved in building out middle-mile fiber are multiplied many times over when trying to dig in a cable to every house. The sheer amount of civil work that will be needed, network nodes that need to be powered along the way, and the multiple right-of-way demands become much bigger problems.
When we dig into that fiber reach figure a bit more, ten states have fiber reach above 55% and in Lagos state, that figure is 82%. We just may be ignoring a potential solution staring at us in the face. Practically every household in metro areas in Nigeria have infrastructure delivering wires to them: the electricity distribution system.
If x% of everybody in a given metro area has a fiber network within a 5km radius, then two things can be deduced: x% of mobile towers in that area are within <5km of a fiber network, and x% of the population in that area is within <5km of a cell tower. This makes power distribution lines in metro areas suitable for
- Short-haul fiber-to-the-tower connections
- Last mile fiber-to-the-home connections with mobile towers serving as the beginning of that last mile, as they currently do for mobile broadband.
There are obvious advantages to this:
- Market Structure: Mobile network operators in Nigeria have in the past years divested from their passive network assets, including mobile towers. This has paved the way for separation of the core service of providing connectivity from the ancillary service of providing security, power and space for their equipment. Any potential operator of a home broadband service need only not worry about power and security, but also also has mobile tower landlords who will only be too willing to have an additional tenant.
- Proximity to Power Distribution Lines: Network towers in metro areas are ubiquitous, and a good majority of them already have a connection to the grid. Those that don’t are bound to be only a short distance away.
This is not a magic silver bullet; there are some major challenges:
- Regulatory/Legal framework: Two main questions need to be answered. One, who owns rights-of-way on power distribution lines? Is this party legally allowed to grant right-of-way for purposes other than power distribution?
- Infrastructure Quality: Electricity distribution infrastructure in Nigeria is not exactly top-notch. Slanting concrete poles and rotting wooden poles dot the landscape, while regular storms are known to fell poles and leave residents without power. One may wonder how this may be affected by the added load of internet cables.
- Security of cables: Nigeria has a problem with vandals when it comes to wired infrastructure. While in dense metro areas there may be a higher security barrier for vandals to cross, it is a problem that needs to be solved for commercial viability.
Using power distribution infrastructure for delivering fixed broadband-to-the-home is not perfect, but it may a good (and the quickest) chance of progress.
