Elon Musk, billionaire owner of SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportations services company, is making plans to establish in Nigeria.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Professor Umar Danbatta has said that “ SpaceX is in the process of launching a low-earth orbiting (LOE) constellation of satellites to provide low latency, high bandwidths Internet to all corners of the globe and has identified Nigeria as a critical market.”
Danbatta, stated this during a presentation to the Commission by a delegation from SpaceX in Abuja recently.
He also revealed that SpaceX has been in discussion with NCC virtually over the past months, to begin the process of pursuing all necessary licenses to bring Starlink, its satellite-based broadband services to Nigeria.
SpaceX’s Starlink Market Access Director for Africa, Ryan Goodnight and the company’s consultant, Levin Born made a presentation, after which the Executive Commissioner, Technical Services of NCC, Ubale Maska, responded saying “As the regulator of a highly dynamic sector in Nigeria, the Commission is conscious of the need to ensure that our regulatory actions are anchored on national interest.”
“We have listened to your presentation and we will review it vis-à-vis our regulatory direction of ensuring effective and a sustainable telecoms ecosystem where a licensee’s operational model does not dampen healthy competition among other licensees,” Maska told the SpaceX delegation.