Chinenye Anuforo
The Nigeria Broadcasting Commission (NBC) said the Federal Government is working on the possibility of releasing a total of N30 billion in two tranches of N15 billion each for installation of settop boxes for digital switchover
This is even as the Commission disclosed that it has secured the commitment of a South Korean technology firm to build set-top-boxes in-country to prosecute the project.
Its Director-General, Is’haq Modibo Kawu, who spoke on the sideline of Telecoms Leadership Summit organised by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in Lagos, also said the N30 billion will be repaid from the resources coming out from the frequencies.
He said the Commission has completed the digital mapping of the whole country, a development that will enable it to deploy transmission facilities. Kawu said: “Over the last three months, we were in discussion with a company from South Korea and they have accepted to come and put in place facilities to produce one million set-top-boxes in Nigeria so that, we can have the boxes that will serve for the rollout of DSO in different locations especially Lagos and Kano which are major centers.
“The boxes will be produced by the companies that are licensed to produce in Nigeria. They are going to give facilities and the payments will be after the sale of the boxes. In the past, the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) from China insist they are paid before production but now, the Koreans are saying, we will give you the facility, we produce in Nigeria then you can sale and give us the money.
That is very significant for all the companies because there is no money for them from the banking system and that makes our task easy in terms of being able to roll out Lagos, Kano and Port Harcourt which are the three major economic and population centres in Nigeria.”
According to him, this is a milestone in the journey to achieving analogue switch off in the country because the Chinese OEMs earlier approached over the set-top-boxes insisted on payment of cash before service.