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The Federal Government has said it has reduced the cost of data in the country by 50 percent.
Isa Pantami, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, revealed this in a statement on Thursday.
Recall the Minister had in December, 2019 introduced the Nigerian National Broadband Plan (2020-2025) which was subsequently unveiled by President Muhammadu Buhari on the 19th of March, 2020.
The goal of the plan was to reduce the average cost of 1GB of data to a maximum of N390 by 2025.
Pantami noted that the data cost reduction was made possible in line with his directives to the service providers through the industry regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
He explained the average cost of 1GB data was reduced from N1,000 cost of January 2020 to N487.18 in November 2020.
“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),” the Minister’s partly reads.
“In line with Dr Pantami’s commitment to under promise and over deliver, the measures have caused the current cost of data to reduce significantly beyond the December 2020 projection of N925.
“Based on the report by NCC, the average cost of N1,000 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.”
Pantami further said the Ministry through the NCC, will continue to ensure that consumers enjoy a price regime that supports fairness and is friendly to consumers.
He added that “policies are in place to ensure that operators adopt competitive pricing that eschews unjustifiable margins.”
The further hinted that the complaints about rapid data depletion are also being investigated by the authorities.
The Minister, however, directed NCC to respond to all issues raised by our citizens and customers, aaying that all hands will remain on deck to achieve the goals of the Broadband Plan as the Ministry supervises its implementation in line with our National Digital Economy Policy for a Digital Nigeria.
