Information
and communications technology experts in the country have urged governments at
all levels to ease policies on deployment of telecommunications
infrastructure
as MTN and Huawei plan to launch mobile Internet of Things (IoT) next year.
The two operators
have announced launch dates for Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT)
solutions in Nigeria by the end of 2018.
Narrowband
IoT wireless technology will enable MTN to develop vertical industry
applications for usage based Insurance, Smart Refrigeration for commercial
bottling market, and smart Water Metering.
Mohammed
Rudman, managing director, Internet Exchange Point of Nigeria (IXPN), said that
a smart water metering solution enables the automated collection of utility
meter data, while manual meter reading leads to high labour costs and
inaccurate data.
He said:
“for these to happen, governments need to assist operators to increase base
stations in the country because operators will have to upgrade their base
stations and build new ones for mobile internet of Things to work. The process
of securing ‘Right of way’ by operators should be made easier as base stations
will be connected via fibre links and cost should also be lowered”.
He decried a
situation where government stops building of new base station in some cities,
“you can’t increase capacity without building new base station. Because
operators are not building additional base stations that the industry is faced
with congestion that results to poor quality of service,” he said.
Chris Uwaje,
Africa Chair for World Forum on Internet of Things (IoTs), corroborating Rudman
on need to expand capacity, said: “To date, the world has deployed about 5
billion “smart” connected things. Predictions say there will be 50 billion
connected devices by 2020 translates to over USD20 trillion dollars.
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