By Cyber Era Staff
The Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) has carried out a post mortem of the recent hike in the cost of Right of Way (RoW) by some State Governments and Agencies dubbing the move as unnecessary as it would be counterproductive and slow down broadband development in the States, even as it commended the State Governors for the giant strides in the area of accelerating the development and growth of their various States.
ATCON information sent to us by its administrative secretary, Ajibola Olude and authored by its President Olusola Teniola, reiterated its commitment to work with the various State Governments and Agencies in providing an enabling environment for the establishment of more telecom and ICT companies in the states, but regretted the recent hike in the cost of RoW did not augur well with the Association because the move would retard development in the states.
ATCON gave some reasons for its stance on the hiked cost of RoW. Affirming the critical place of collaboration in growing the telecom and ICT ecosystem, ATCON stated: “Our members which are principally telecom and ICT Companies rely heavily on the State governments and its agencies to make policies that promote further investment which would lead to building more telecom infrastructures that are needed by the citizenry, governance and businesses to deliver hitch free broadband services but with the recent upward review of the RoW, this might be difficult to achieve,” and appealed for a reversal of the cost back to what was being charged before.
ATCON believes the socio-economic development of the state was not mutually exclusive to Broadband Infrastructure Development. It noted state governments were passionate about improving life expectancy, literacy, increase level of employment in their respective States, saying with friendly business environment for telecom companies, all these goals could be achieved on the condition that the RoW charge was not inimical to the spread of broadband infrastructure development, while restating its continued availability and willingness to engage the state governments to keep RoW charges southwards as it remained committed to contributing its quota to the development of the states.
