By Emmanuel Elebeke

The Federal Government last week, unveiled the Ka-Band utilization for rural dwellers in Kubwa, a suburb of Abuja. The project, though, managed by One Network, a specialized agent network management organization, is a partnership between the Nigerian Postal Services, NIPOST and the Nigerian Communications Satellite, NigComSat on the deployment of KA-Band satellite services for rural connectivity via the post.

NigKaNet is a Ka broadband services that offers high speed connectivity and data downloads at great speed and affordable prices. It also offers a more compact customer promise Vsat antennae with  less interference to current capacity when positioned at the same orbital slots as C and Ku-bands satellite.

The initiative was in line with federal government’s drive for rapid and effective broadband penetration across the rural and underserved communities in the country.

Under this initiative, farmers will access loans from the facility for them to be taken to the next level, rural people will access bank loans within less time and stress through the agents; about seven million farmers are expected to be registered; people can access services for National Identity Number, NIN among other services.

It was also part of the ongoing effort by the federal government to restore the moribund Post offices back to relevance and reach the rural dwellers with world-class infrastructure and services, since the postal outlets have relatively good presence in the 774 Local Government Areas and consequently can contribute substantially to bringing financial services nearer to the rural populace.

The Ka-band launch is expected to open endless opportunities for the ease of financial transactions and business growth in the rural communities.

Unveiling the project, the Minister of Communications Technology, Dr. Omobola Johnson, said with the launch of the NigCoNet, Nigeria has assumed leadership position in the region in deployment of satellite for broadband services.

She said, the programme would not be limited to broadband access but accelerate efforts in achieving the goal of inclusive growth, describing the Ka-Band  as a backbone, upon which the financial services inclusion and opportunities scheme of CBN is being based.

While commending the Public Private Partnership, PPP pattern of the initiative, Johnson re-affirmed that federal government is repositioning the post for the contemporary challenge of inclusive growth, adding that the post is set to establish a network of over 300,000 postal agents across the country to bring financial services to rural areas.

According to OneNetwork, in addition to the 774 post offices in the country, plans were on to integrate over 1170 direct owned post offices to offer the multi-faceted services to the underserved people with the hope of hitting the 50,000 target by the Ministry.