With Starlink, Nigeria now has 100% broadband coverage —Pantami

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami, said that Nigeria has achieved 100% broadband coverage following the licensing and operation of SpaceX’s Starlink.

The Minister stated this while presenting the scorecard of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration in the ICT sector.

According to him, through the National Broadband Plan (NBP 2020-2025) Nigeria was targeting 90% broadband coverage by the year 2025. He said this has been achieved ahead of time through the licensing of Starlink as Nigerians can now have access to high-speed internet from any part of the country.

While noting that the country has now achieved its target before the deadline in the plan, Pantami said:

• “Based on the National Broadband Plan, we were to have 90% broadband coverage by December 2025. However, we recently gave a license to Starlink to provide services and this has given us 100% coverage, about 3 years ahead of schedule.”

Broadband plan: Counting the development of the broadband plan as one of the achievements of the present government, Pantami said:

• As of August 2019, Nigeria had no valid Broadband Plan; the previous one expired in 2018 (one-year vacuum). I set up a committee of stakeholder experts to draft a new Plan. The Nigerian National Broadband Plan (NNBP) was graciously unveiled and launched by His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, on the 19th of March, 2020. 
• The Plan is designed to deliver data download speeds across Nigeria of a minimum 25Mbps in urban areas, and 10Mbps in rural areas, with effective coverage available to at least 90% of the population by 2025 at a price, of not more than N390 per 1GB of data (i.e. 2% of median income or 1% of minimum wage).”

Starlink is not for all: Although Starlink has commenced operation in Nigeria with a few Nigerians who pre-ordered its hardware now active on the network, its current pricing shows that Starlink’s broadband service is not meant for the masses.

Aside from the hardware, which costs $600, subscriptions for the service costs $43 a month according to information provided by Starlink.

Starlink’s internet service is accessible from any part of the country. While this is expected to bridge the connectivity gap in rural Nigeria, where the other network operators could not deploy their services, the issue of cost may prevent many Nigerians from accessing Starlink.