CONVERGENCE IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS: OPPORTUNITIES ANDCHALLENGES IN THE NIGERIAN REGULATORY SECTOR

Abstract

The historical development of telecommunications and computers in the recent past has witnessed a tremendous gestationand proliferation of technologies as a result of convergence on information and communications technologies (ICT). A key phrase in the review of legislation and policy that affect broadcasting remains that of technological convergence. In Nigeria, for example, integration work  started  in  the  mid  2006  as  it  was  no  longer  fashionable  to  deliver  only  voice  telephony services   to   consumers.   In   addressing   the   technical   aspect   of   convergence,   the   Nigerian Communications  Commission  (NCC)  adopted  this  regime  under a  unified  access  licensing scheme.1Although  the  integration  of  various  services  was  very  slow  due  largely  to  inconsistence government  policies  engendered  by  changes  in  administration.  Nevertheless,  common  belief shared  byprevious  and  current  administrations  is  that  layer  model  (horizontal  regulation)  is  the trend for the convergence in communication laws in future. To achieve this model, the Nigerian government through their representative agencies, accepted that it would require more time and effort to put the horizontal regulation into practice.For the sake of clarity, it would be necessary to define these terms so as to provide soft landing towards the understanding of these terms. What are convergence and technological convergence in the context of telecommunications?Convergence has been  given various definitions by  several scholars. However, one thing that is common among them is the understanding that digitalisation is not so much defined by its physical infrastructure, but by the content or the medium.2Blackman, 1998 defined Convergence as a “trend in  the  evolution  of  technology  services  and  industry  structures.â€3Convergence  was  more technically defined by Collins as “the coming together of telecommunications, computing and broadcasting into a single digital bit-stream.