Nigerian Communication Satellite Ltd (NIGCOMSAT) says that the country needs an additional communication satellite to facilitate the process of data collection.

The Senior Manager, Department of Innovations and Development, Mr Muhammad Jiya, said this in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

Jiya recalled that the first communication satellite in the country, NigComSat 1, was initially launched in May 2007 but developed technical issues and was de-orbited.

The country, however, returned with a replacement satellite, NigComSat 1R in December 2011 and had been collecting data for the country and other nearby countries as the satellite could capture information.

According to the senior manager, an additional satellite will repose the confidence of people, institutions interested in using information from the country’s satellite.

He said that data value chain in the country could contribute to the economic growth of the country if agencies saddled with the responsibility of collecting data were synchronised and brought to standard.

He added that “NigComSat 1R is sufficient but the skepticism of people is that there is no backup for the satellite.

“People are skeptical to come on board on NigComSat1R because they feel that the fear of what happened with NigComSat 1 might occur again. If NIGCOMSAT has an additional satellite, people will be more comfortable to operate with the company’s satellite because of its backup.”

He, however, noted that the company was already discussing with China Great Wall, the Chinese company that built NigComSat 1R to assist the country in the fabrication of another one.

He explained that the mandate of NIGCOMSAT was to provide broadband services and inter-connectivity for agencies of government and corporate organisations.

Jiya said that for agencies to use broadband services effectively, NIGCOMSAT came up with solutions as value added services that would enable them to drive the need for connectivity.

He said “NIGCOMSAT came up with Regulatory Reporting Solution which will help agencies in connectivity.

“The Regulatory Reporting allows the agency to design a reporting scheme that will give all the instructions of how you want your data to be.”

The senior manager said “we implement that reporting scheme on a reporting portal where regulatory entities can log on to and submit file that must validate the schemer that is uploaded.

“After successfully validating the data, the data gets integrated into the main data base of the organisation and it will allow the agencies do practical, strategic analysis to be able to generate intelligent report from that data.”

He added that the company had contacted some organisations which would need the solution for effective data collection in the nation. (NAN)