NCC, ATCON Rally Stakeholders to Drive Mass FTTH Adoption, RoW Reforms

Emma Okonji

In order to drive Nigeria’s national backbone expansion plan through the deployment of fibre-optic cable that will boost broadband penetration and improve network resilience, industry stakeholders have been urged to embrace mass Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH) adoption across the country.

To achieve this, governments across board have also been advised to support FTTH deployment through Right of Way (RoW) reforms, simpler approval processes and better protection of infrastructure, while operators and infrastructure providers must deepen investment, uphold standards, share infrastructure where efficient and expand beyond already-served areas.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and the Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), gave the advice in Lagos, during ATCON forum on FTTH, with the theme: ‘Addressing Challenges, Strengthening Standards and Ensuring Sustainable FTTH Deployment in Nigeria’.

In his keynote presentation, the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida, said the path to mass FTTH adoption would not be delivered by the regulator alone, by operators alone or by government alone, but by collective participation.

“Fibre infrastructure is now foundational to Nigeria’s digital economy, inclusive growth and global competitiveness. Addressing deployment challenges, strengthening standards and ensuring sustainable rollout must therefore be treated as a national development priority. If internet connectivity now underpins how Nigerians learn, work, trade, heal, govern and prosper, then we cannot afford to treat fibre deployment as anything less than a national imperative,” Maida said.

According to him, the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy’s Project BRIDGE represents one of Nigeria’s most ambitious digital infrastructure programmes. By extending the national fibre backbone through the deployment of approximately 90,000 kilometres of additional fibre-optic cable, the project is expected to expand broadband availability, improve network resilience and extend high-capacity connectivity to all 774 Local Government Areas.

Maida stressed the need for Nigerians to protect telecoms infrastructure and national asset, adding that between January and December 2025, the industry recorded over 27,685 fibre cut incidents, over 27,000 access denials and 4,210 theft cases across operators. “These figures underline why the protection of telecommunications infrastructure must now be treated as a shared national duty.

This is why the full operationalisation of the Presidential Order designating 

telecommunications infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) is so important,” Maida added.    

Creating the right conditions for sustainable deployment of FTTH across the country, Maida said Nigerians must first ensure that the broadband market would support sustainable investment and healthy competition; improve the deployment environment through Right of Way approvals. He said RoW approvals remained one of the most significant factors affecting fibre rollout. “Excessive charges, unpredictable approval timelines and multiple permitting requirements increase deployment costs and slow national progress. State governments must increasingly recognise that the long-term economic value of digital infrastructure far outweighs the short-term revenue from RoW charges,” Maida further said.

He however explained that 13 states have completely waived RoW charges, while sixteen others have adopted the National Economic Council’s recommended rate of N145 per linear metre, promising that NCC will continue to engage the remaining states towards full alignment and, ultimately, the elimination of unnecessary barriers to broadband deployment.

Addressing the importance of FTTH for Nigeria’s next phase of growth, Maida said: “Fibre provides the speed, resilience and scalability required for increasingly data-intensive services. It also gives the country an infrastructure base that can support future upgrades without having to rebuild the entire access network each time technology advances.”

President of ATCON, Mr. Tony Emoekpere, in his welcome address, said every fibre project had two lives, public and private.  According to him, Nigeria’s

FTTH challenge is not only how to lay more fibre, it is rather how to build the compact that allows fibre to survive.

As technology, fibre is fast, scalable, and future-ready. But as infrastructure, fibre must survive economics, regulation, construction, vandalism, power instability, market pressure, and household affordability, Emoekpere said.

Speaking about the need to adopt FTTH and to protect fibre from willful destruction, Emoekpere said: “If broadband infrastructure is critical national infrastructure, then protection cannot begin after the cable is cut. Protection must begin before the excavator arrives. Law is not enforcement. Recognition is not protection. Sympathy after damage is not a protection framework. Every fibre cut is more than a technical fault. It is an economic injury. It affects the customer who loses service, the business that cannot transact, the school that cannot connect, the hospital that depends on access, the public office that needs continuity, and the operator whose reputation is damaged by a failure he may not have caused.”

In one of the panel sessions that discussed ‘Technical Standards and Infrastructure Resilience’ in FTTH deployment, the panelists stressed the need for fibre duct to be available and ready with connectivity points, such that three points are made available for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), while the fourth connecting point should be reserved for future purposes. Director, Strategies at Huawei, Mr. Eric Chen, also stressed the need for designing fibre with standard specifications, as part of a building, during the building design, to enable easy FTTH deployment.      

CEO, Open Access Data Centre (OADC), Dr. Ayotunde Coker, who featured as a panelist, highlighted the need for infrastructure sharing to reduce cost when adopting FTTH deployment. 

Infrastructure and ICT agencies from Oyo, Edo and Kogi states that also featured at the panel session, pledged their support for FTTH rollout in their states. They also pledged to protect fibre and other telecoms infrastructure in their states, through regulation and awareness creation among the citizens.

Director General, Kogi Utility, Infrastructure Management & Compliance Agency (KUIMCA), Dr. Taufiq Isa, shared perspective on how the state was collaborating with telecoms operators to ensure hitch-free deployment of fibre across the state.