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Nigeria Communications Satellite (NIGCOMSAT) Limited has announced plans for infrastructure upgrade to improve its service delivery in a relaunch of its brand presence at a Stakeholders’ Breakfast Meeting in Abuja hosted by its new Managing Director/CEO, Jane Egerton-Idehen.
RELATED: Egerton-Idehen shares vision for NigComSat’s transformational journey
NIGCOMSAT’s statement expressed in remarks by Egerton-Idehen and Executive Director, Marketing and Business Development, Dr Najeem F. Salaam at the event may offer a balm as some observers pondered on the future of the communication satellite company underscored by its financial challenges, government dithering over its privatization, and increasing competition from satellite and other market operators.
In nearly two decades of its establishment to improve the delivery of digital communications through satellite, NIGCOMSAT has been more enmeshed in controversies over whether its existence and seeming inability to live up to its statutory mandate has justified huge funds and investment; sometimes put at over N43.5 billion.
But NIGCOMSAT’s new leadership is promising a new lease of life and insisting that the “current focus of the company is to maintain and enhance service quality, ensure infrastructure reliability and the continuity of its technology to rekindle its commitment to serve its clients and partners better, whilst delivering the mandate as listed by the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy.”
NIGCOMSAT adds new AI-chatbot
The company also unveiled its new “value-adding services, an AI Chatbot, Ayesha, and some EdTech solutions for schools, using its Ka-band service.
The EdTech solutions, deployed in partnership with Queue Edge, a private enterprise, will help bridge “the digital divide and empower schools to improve learning outcomes,” NIGCOMSAT stated.
Adding: “The EdTech project has three main areas of focus: numeracy and literacy for primary schools, creating engaging and inspiring stories that celebrate African culture and promote essential soft skills such as self-confidence, teamwork, and kindness; and an AI-powered, cloud-based learning content aggregator to aid teaching and the general Learning Management System.”
According to NIGCOMSAT’s Head of Marketing, Olufunke Fagbaje, the publicly owned satellite operator is eager to do “business with existing and potential customers” in line with the new direction to compete for market space through better service delivery and a customer-focused policy.
For former Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbe, the company should look quickly at launching new satellites to adequately some of Nigeria’s security challenges facing the country.
“We need security people to have Satellite means to monitor our borders and monitor activities within the country 24/7, otherwise the future of our country would be at risk going by the land mass and population,” said Ogbe.
