December 19, 2021

On Monday, December 13, the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, pulled off yet another stunt; a milestone of gigantic socio-economic implications. It successfully conducted the auction for the 3.5 GigaHertz spectrum for the deployment of the 5G telecom technology standard for broadband cellular networks.

At the end of the 8-hour, eleven-round bids, MTN Nigeria and new entrant, Mafab Communications Limited, made the grade. Airtel Networks Limited could not go the whole stretch. It dropped out. The reserve price was $197.4 million, but after 11 rounds of intense contest the bid price settled at $273,600,000 for each lot, a jump of $76.2 million. The provisional winners are expected to pay the winning bid price, less the Intention-to-Bid Deposit of $19.74 million (10% of reserve price of $197.4m) by February 24, 2022, meaning the regulator will rake in for Nigeria a chunky $547,200,000 from both winners. Good business!

5G is the newest wave in the telecom ecosphere. It is a successor to the 4G. Phone companies started deploying 5G worldwide in 2019. But unlike its predecessors – 1G, 2G, 3G and 4G – 5G is the most controversial. And the reasons are in our faces: First, it can do what other genres (from 1G to 4G) cannot do with a far bigger capacity to do more.

Experts say 5G comes with multiple benefits being of higher data rate and provides a much faster Internet speed, ten times faster than 4G; it has lower latency (time it takes for data to be transferred from its original source to its destination); and it has larger capacity which makes it possible to connect to more end devices (IoT), has capacity to handle a maximum of 1 million devices per square kilometres.

In the chronology of 1G to 4G, what has happened is a meeting of man and ICT. But with 5G, it’s far more than that. It’s a meeting of man, ICT and machines and other things in-between. It is therefore the duty of the media to help connect these dots just so the ordinary man out there will understand and appreciate that what has been created as 5G is neither an enemy nor a monster but a carefully innovated partner for development.

The evolution from 1G to 5G shows that techies are not sleeping. They are constantly inventing and re-inventing. Therefore, if the media must report this sector effectively with all its gizmos, journalists must also train and upskill their journalism capacities just so they can effectively inform, educate, set agenda, interpret, entertain and influence their audiences.

In the case of 5G, the media should dismantle all conspiracy theories boldly and loudly. Reassure their audiences that if 1G did not give them malaria, 2G did not birth diarrhea, 3G did not produce pneumonia or 4G HIV there is no way 5G could be the causative agent of coronavirus, cancer or autism.

Ahead of the anticipated rollout of 5G next year, the Nigerian media should be buzzing with Explainers and Analyses on how 5G will impact agriculture, ecommerce, e-banking, ICT, education, healthcare, tourism and hospitality, security, entertainment including the music and movie industries and other aspects of Digital Nigeria.

The National Bureau of Statistics reported that Agricultural sector contributed 24.6 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product, GDP, in the second quarter of 2020. Between January and March this year, the sector has contributed 22.35 percent of the GDP. This clearly shows that life is returning to agriculture and it is the responsibility of journalists to explain to the rice farmers in Kebbi and Ebonyi, the cocoa growers in Oyo how 5G would help them in the sales and marketing of their produce.

The media should provoke discourses and reports that highlight how farmers can leverage 5G technology to increase their yield by first getting the right seedlings. The media should explain to the farmer, the agronomists, agric extension officers, the off-takers and every other player in the value chain how 5G technology can help them optimize their performance and efficiency.

I recall that after the rollout of services by Mobile Network Operators, MNOs, in 2001, it took less than one year for the frenzy to hit a high note, prompting the media to coin the catchy phrase – Telecom Revolution. That phrase echoed beyond the shores of Nigeria. It was heard in Switzerland, the headquarters of the International Telecommunications Union, ITU. Within that first decade, the Nigerian media sustained the fire of the revolution. Courtesy of sustained media reportage of the Telecom Revolution, Nigeria became the hub of telecom activities on the continent and at a time, was ranked the fastest growing mobile telecom market in the world.

Besides, NCC became a benchmark for regulatory excellence in Africa such that the ITU was referring other African nations to visit Nigeria just to understudy the NCC. That practice subsists till this day because the Commission has maintained the highest level of corporate governance in its regulatory duties.

But the world would not have known about the regulatory prowess of the NCC or the fact that MTN declared its highest profit in all its years of operation in Africa only when it commenced operation in Nigeria. The Nigerian media pushed through these messages to the rest of the world and that explains why telecoms is at the crest of major attractors of Foreign Direct Investments, FDIs, into the Nigerian economy.

The media can begin to inform and explain to its publics how 5G will help Nigeria achieve free, fair and credible election going forward as we migrate from Direct Data Capture machines and Card Reader to the BVAS (Bimodal Voter Accreditation System) which will culminate in electronic transmission of election results.

Journalists should explain to their respective audiences how 5G will transform education and learning through flexible virtual learning methodology; explain to the entertainment community how their fortunes would be transformed through faster downloads and streaming of their music and videos; drum into the ears of our tech-savvy youths that with 5G, it’s easier for them to create their own Apps, market themselves and even work from Nigeria for companies in Europe, the Americas etc;

Journalists as Influencers and Interpreters of events and issues should explain to their audiences how 5G will create opportunities and bolster efficiency in ecommerce, e-banking, healthcare delivery, trade and investments; sports administration and marketing, and in fact all aspects of human endeavour.

The impending rollout of 5G offers the media yet another opportunity to build on its mutual partnership with NCC to trigger another chapter of Telecom Revolution, this time, a BROADBAND REVOLUTION powered by 5G. The Nigerian media did it before. It can do it again by providing a fresh momentum to deepen discourse around 5G as a tool to create a brave new world of IoTs (Internet of Things), Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and other seamless possibilities.

As Nigeria steels herself for a 5G rollout, the media should take a front row position to hype the benefits. The media should also give credit to Professor Umar Garba Danbatta, the EVC/CEO of the NCC and his team for yet another landmark that further cements Nigeria’s position among the most vibrant telecoms markets in the world and a leader in Africa.

Author: Ken Ugbechie

First published in Sunday Sun