Malam Ahmed Rufai, managing director, Nigerian Communications Satellite Ltd (Nigcomsat) has said that the company has signed an agreement with a broadcasting outfit to provide quality communications system in the country.
Rufai, said the agreement was to provide unified common carrier facility and distribution of digital satellite television and radio services.
He said it would enable them to provide services to all the radio and television stations emanating from Nigeria and other countries.
Rufai added that the agreement would bring about revolution in the communications industries and boost the country’s economic growth.
“Both Nigcomsat and Digitech have long recognised the importance of changing the lives of ordinary people. This is by getting information from them and about them, resulting into looking for ways of actualising it,” he said.
Rufai said the joint venture would address the long-term damage to the Nigerian broadcasting environment.
He said the environment was created by years of technological dumping and inconsistent approach to signal and content distribution by practitioners.
Mr Shola Ajay,managing director of Digitech said the organisation was a unified Common Signal Carrier and distributor.
Ajay said the partnership would enable the provision of services directly to all Nigerians through free-to-air and pay television.
He noted that the service would ensure a soft landing for the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting within the shortest possible time.
“Information ought to be a right not a privilege, whether Nigerians receive this signals by decoder or free air, the fact that they receive signals from all over the country and from around the world, means the digital revolution has arrived in Nigeria,” he added.
Ajay said that Nigcomsat and Digitech “direct to home” broadcasting of television and radio signals would commence in the next six months and the whole country would be covered within 18 months.
Sen. Tawar Wada, chairman of Digitech, said information was a central concept of any society, adding that it could be enhanced through quality gathering and dissemination.