Nigeria's telecommunication and Internet scene is a frenzy of activity with businesses, NGOs, government agencies, universities, ISPs, and venture capitalists trying to define the market and establish their links.  Yet it seems much of their efforts are being rendered unproductive by the shortsighted, vague, and capricious actions of the national telecommunications monopoly, NITEL.

Amidst the crisis-cum-opportunity which thrives in this environment of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, a whole array of new political intrigues comes to bear.  Sensing an opportunity, some entrepreneurs look to their political connections to secure a university contract.  Established ISPs actively seek to undermine other's efforts to connect to the Internet.  University administrators fantasize about becoming their community's link to the Internet while making huge profits.  The NUC draws up plans that would give it a national Internet presence twice that of NITEL.  Nigerian ISPs offer proposals to universities which are four to fives times the marketplace cost of connections.  And all parties are taken aback at the expense and expertise required to establish and maintain Internet connectivity.

At this point it might prove useful to think about schemes which could involve multiple parties, both to save costs and to nip potential political problems in the bud.

Once a university secures a license and installs a satellite dish, might there be a role for an ISP -- or maybe several ISPs -- to work with the university to share their equipment to help the university maintain their systems and generate some profits?

That is, where the ISP assumes the risk, installs the telephone lines, and contracts with the university for a certain segment of its bandwidth? Where the university brings to the table a satellite connection, a license, and the ground station equipment? (Perhaps, in turn, the ISP would devote a few dial-in connections to the university and be able to assist the university in maintaining its router and servers.) 

Or perhaps the university might want to contract with an ISP to install, configure, and support the equipment.  The university gains a partner who has significant skills and avoids the expense of training its own cadre of technicians.  The ISP gains the experience of installing and maintaining multiple sites. 

The other bandwidth/cost sharing scenario that the universities might want to consider that would be less risky than becoming a wholesale ISP, is to set up one or more links with organizations in their area.  They could install microwave or spread-spectrum wireless links to their partner organizations.  This way they would have fewer points of failure and an understanding that their partners will share with the university in the learning stages of setting up and maintaining reliable Internet service.  This would shield the universities from the vicissitudes and expense of setting up an ISP and possibly also give them the ability to monitor and control the amount of bandwidth their partners are exploiting. 

The other question to ask is, have models been developed at other African universities whereby they share their bandwidth with other agencies and still maintain their services?  How successful have these been?  The University of Liberia had such arrangements with local NGO's when they installed their Internet connection in 1998.  This would be worthy of further research.

On a technical level, the options get even more complicated.

Or perhaps in some areas where there are already ISPs (which at this point is only Lagos) universities might want to set up simplex service.  In such a case, the university receives its incoming signal via less-expensive satellite broadcast but sends its outgoing signals via a dial-up connection to an ISP.

And of course we shouldn't ignore the possibility of the scheduled simplex service where, say, the University of Abuja dials in to the NUC or an ISP for the uplink and enjoys sole use of the satellite braodcast segment every day from 10:00 - 2:00, giving academics at that university a chance to browse the Internet for four hours a day, yet still not costing the university a full time expensive twenty-four hour by seven connection.  

With digital communications technologies, it's easy to mix-and-match components to develop an optimal connection.  In many cases this will probably involve both the private and public sectors. 

At this point, it is worth keeping the options open...