Bandwidth Consortium
The Bandwidth Consortium
The Bandwidth Consortium Secretariat is hosted by the Nigeria ICT Forum of Partnership Institutions in Abuja.
Technical and business operations are managed by an Operations Manager with Accounting and Administrative support provided by staff of the Nigeria ICT Forum Secretariat. The Consortium also employs an automated network monitoring and alerting system which complements those of the network operators for more efficient member services.
Our Mission:
To improve access of Africans to knowledge and opportunities by supplying high quality Internet bandwidth at competitive prices through wholesale purchase. We improve the quality of services delivered by network operators through training of members, proactive network monitoring systems, and knowledgeable personnel.
Background:
Following a series of workshops, studies and meetings, 11 African universities and institutions, supported by the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA), concluded that insufficient amounts and high cost of Internet bandwidth were common problems that adversely affected teaching, learning and research. The problem also limited ability of sub-Saharan institutions to interact and collaborate with the global academic community. They decided to cooperate in solving that shared problem, by aggregating their bandwidth needs and forming a bandwidth purchasing consortium.
With support from four major U.S. foundations that are members of the PHEA, the African Bandwidth Consortium (BWC) project was launched in 2005. The BWC Project was first hosted by African Virtual University (AVU) in Nairobi, and some still refer to it as the AVU BWC. In mid 2007, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Nairobi kindly accepted hosting responsibilities of the BWC as a stop-gap measure. The Nigeria ICT Forum of Partnership Institutions assumed hosting responsibilities for the BWC, effective from November 1, 2008.
Today, the Consortium is growing to include more institutions, non-Governmental organizations, and select corporate organizations that value reliable high speed network connectivity backed by a knowledgeable team. In Nigeria, the Bandwidth Consortium offers nationwide optic-fibre through our network partners. The last satellite to optic-fibre migration was done in 2015 and all members are presently connected by fibre.