Breaking: FG lowers data cost, suspends SIM sales

The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, has stated that measures have been put in place to significantly reduce the average cost of data in Nigeria, noting that average cost of 1GB of data has reduced from the January 2020 cost of N1,000 to N487.18 in November, 2020.

Dr Femi Adeluyi, Technical Assistant (Information Technology) to the Honourable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy in a Statement https://www.commtech.gov.ng/news-and-media/daily-news-report/386-current-cost-of-data-reduces-to-less-than-50-of-january-2020-cost.html disclosed this based on a Report by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) submitted to the Honourable Minister following the implementation of the directives.

Dr Adeluyi furthered that the 2020-2025 Nigeria National Broadband plan would ensure steady decrease of data cost for IGB as follows: 2020 (N925), 2021 (N850), 2022 (N775), 2023 (N700), 2024 (N545) and 2025 (N390) as launched by President Mohammadu Buhari on 19th March, 2020.

"The Honourable Minister had inaugurated a Committee that developed the Nigerian National Broadband Plan (2020-2025) on the 16th of December, 2019. The Plan was unveiled and launched by His Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, on the 19th of March, 2020. One of the goals of the Plan is to reduce the average cost of 1GB of data to a maximum of N390 by 2025. With the January 2020 baseline of N1,000 per GB, the maximum projected steady decrease for the end of each year was as follows: 2020 (N925), 2021 (N850), 2022 (N775), 2023 (N700), 2024 (N545) and 2025 (N390)."

It futhered that Dr Patami's commitment to ensure data reduction in Nigeria has taken effect based on the Report by NCC which indicated that the average cost of data as at November 2020 was N487.18, which amounts to 47.33% lower than the projected value. The Report also indicates that the cost of data in November 2020 was less than 50% of the cost of data in January 2020.

The Nigerian Government has also suspended the sale, registration and activation of new SIM Cards across all networks in Nigeria.

In a report contained in Premium Times https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/430298-breaking-nigerian-govt-orders-mtn-glo-others-to-stop-sale-registration-of-sim-cards.html, the decision is to enable the Nigerian Communication Commision audit the Subscriber Registration Database once again as directed by the Federal Government.