Prepared by: Olayinka Tony Abiodun
Nitel, Nigeria
Ianreyio@nigtel.com

INTRODUCTION

The Nigerian Internet initiative started with the effort of the Nigerian Internet group by late 1994. During this period the only access to the Internet was Nigerian Telecomms Ltd (Nitel) leased acts which was then very expensive. The pressure was therefore put on Nitel to build the infrastructural Backbone to make this service more accessible and relatively cheaper to make the effort and awareness drive worth while.

This consideration based on the economic viability and the peoples need to be part of the global happening make Nitel to conclude all arrangements and by the end of 1997 provided and Internet backbone of 2 Mbps Bandwidth available. Immediately, five Point of Presence were strategically located within the country.

Below are the lists of both the existing and planned Internet point of presence in the country.

POINT OF PRESENCE

The existing once are based on the Organizational Zonal Headquarter structure while the proposed ones are to complement the urgent need to reach out to more economically viable cities in the country.

APPLICATIONS AND PUBLIC ACCESS

Each of the existing point of presence is linked to the Internet on a 2mbps trunk access; with each PoP also capable of providing the following access services:
- Internet Service Provider
- Internet Corporate Services
- Single user Dial-up Services

Being the largest Internet Backbone service provider in the country, over Seventeen ISPs are currently connected to Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd. while other smaller ISPs are currently connecting with such Organization as Cyberspace, Comm Stream, Motophone and GS Telecomms presently operating within the country.

On the average the ISPs are rendering services to about four thousand (4,000) users summing up to over (68,000) single dial-up users on the Nitel Internet services.

With the services of the other providers a figure of over ninety-five thousand (95,000) users are currently estimated. Due to the large size of the country and the reluctance of ISPs in deploying their services to the remote areas of the country, Nitel is currently offering single user dial-up services in Abuja, Kaduna, Bauchi and Port Harcourt and are also extending the Internet access via leased circuits to other cities in the neighborhood of this existing Point of Presence.

The major gain of this extension and further addition in the implementation of more point of presence within the country make Internet service more affordable to the people by making accessibility possible on local dialing which is currently on equivalent of 1 cent per minute as against dialing trunk line for Internet access.

VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCOL (VOIP)

With the inevitability of running away from this latest form of delivering cheaper long distance voice communication, the organization is already working on increasing its space segment bandwidth substantially to legitimize putting in place, the necessary switching infrastructure to become a functional carrier of these packeted voice over the Internet.

At the moment the cost of unlimited access on single user dial-up service is $420.000 per annum subscription which amounts to a monthly charge of $35.00.