Houlin Zhao, secretary general, International Telecommunication Union (ITU), has said that half of the population of the world are yet to enjoy the benefits of telecommunications and information technology as they are not connected online yet.
Zhao made the disclosure at an expanded meeting between the Union, telecommunication providers in Nigeria at the headquarters of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in Abuja yesterday.
“Half of the world’s population are not online yet and the only way we can get them online to benefit from information technology is to attract investment of which our telecommunication providers are the biggest investors we have,” he said.
In his response, Umar Garba Danbatta, executive vice chairman of the NCC said as regulators, the commission is planning huge on SMEs affiliated with technology so as to have a very robust development.
“When we went to Busan, South Korea for the last telecommunications conference, we saw what this SMEs showcased which attracted us to have a frame work to get them integrated and to see how we can make them function better,” he said.
Ferdi Moolman, chief executive of MTN Nigeria, who spoke on behalf of the operators identified effective usage of spectrum as one of the vital areas to focus in order to record huge success in the sector.