Olukotun
Olatayo Joshua
Departmentof Electrical/ElectronicsEngineering,
University of Ilorin tysjoshworld@gmail.com tysjoshuniverse@yahoo.com
Abstract
As telecommunication and computing technologies continue to evolve to
shape the global business environment, the broadband internet readiness of a
country becomes an increasingly significant aspect in affecting a country’s global competitiveness. Broadband
infrastructure is seen as crucial to a country’s social, economic and scientific goals and a requirement of the
knowledge economy. It has been purported to provide consumers with better
work/life balance attributed to increased empowerment and productivity, the
ability to work from home and reduced stress. The ability of developing
countries to thrive in global economy depends on the level of broadband
penetration in its economy. However, previous studies have shown that most
developing countries especially Nigeria is yet to embrace fully the penetration
of broadband in its most efficient form. It has been empirically proven that
every 10% increase in broadband penetration in developing countries result in a
commensurate increase of 1.3% GDP. This essay thereby seeks to discuss and
analyze the importance and contributions of broadband to a nation’s socioeconomic development. It also seeks to
increase the awareness of broadband developments in various sectors of the
economy in Nigeria.
Introduction
Nigeria is now at a crucial stage in our renewed march to development, a
stage in which foresight, clarity of vision and firm decisions are required if
we are to ensure that true and sustained development takes place. We are an
economy rich i
n natural resources, and those
sectors can be expected to continue to expand, but a narrowly based growth path
is risky, and the desired level of social and economic development cannot be
attained on the basis of a very few primary products alone. We need to enhance
the value added that is generated in Nigeria as a consequence of exploiting our
resources and to develop our own new specialisations that will be
internationally competitive and enduring. It is essential that we continuously
improve productivity in all sectors. We need to rehabilitate, modernise and
widen our network of both physical and social infrastructure, for without it
our possibilities of advancement will encounter forbidding obstacles. Above
all, we should ensure that Nigeria's development is sustainable and is widely
shared among the populace and not confined to a few enclaves or social strata,
and that each citizen has ample opportunity to participate in the basic
economic and political decisions that affect the daily lives of everyone.
One fundamental difference between the developed and the developing
countries is that the former are also rich in information and has a well
informed citizenry
which
is able to adapt quickly to changing social and economic environments, hence
utilizing opportunities to overcome development challenges such as poverty. In
this regard, information is treated as a commodity which has potential to make
significant changes in many aspects of our social and economic development.
Communication is an essential factor that our world spins around and the
internet is the single most important tool that has made the present high speed
of communication possible. The Internet is the world’s largest repository of
information and knowledge and High Speed Access is critical to fully harnessing
the benefits of the Internet.
Today high speed internet is transforming the world’s landscape more
rapidly and more pervasively than earlier infrastructure networks. Broadband
has the potential of enabling entire new industries and introducing significant
efficiencies into education delivery, health care provision, energy management,
ensuring public safety, government/citizen interaction, and the overall
organization and dissemination of knowledge. But before we analyse all these
endearing benefits
of a broadband internet infrastructure, let’s take a moment
to study what really is a broadband infrastructure and what makes it so
different from the traditional dial-up internet access.
In telecommunications, the term broadband commonly refers to a type of
internet connection with a high speed and high capacity internet access that is
always on and faster than the traditional dial-up access. The medium can be
coaxial cable, optical fibre, twisted pair, DSL(Digital Subscriber Line) local
telephone networks or wireless broadband. Broadband internet access, often
shortened to just broadband and also known as high speed internet access, are
services that provide bit rates considerably higher than that available using a
56kbit/s modem. In the US National Broadband Plan of 2009, the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) defined broadband access as “internet access
that is always on and faster than the traditional dial-up access”, although the
FCC has defined it differently through the years
