Do you use 3G or 4G broadband in Nigeria? No, I don’t mean 3G or 4G in telco and ISP ad campaigns. I’m talking about the real deal on your phone or PC. Just when you thought that the internet speed being advertised in Nigeria as broadband is real, the Chairman of a pioneer Internet Service Provider in Nigeria makes a shocking revelation: ‘We don’t have broadband in Nigeria’.

Linkserve‘s Chairman/CEO, Chima Onyekwere told BusinessDay in a recent interview that, “When we defined broadband four years ago, we said that broadband was anything from 128kbs. Today, we can not define broadband in that manner. Broadband is actually 4 megabits per second. Therefore, I can confidently say that no telcos or ISP is delivering 4 MEG to any consumer in the market.”
As far as we know, this is the first time that an industry leader such as Onyekwere is being truthful to Internet consumers in Nigeria amidst the stiff competition between ISPs and Telcos over whose data service is faster. What this means is that if you hear any ISP’s executive say: ‘We have 3G or 4G broadband‘, just tell them to shut up.

In a recent Mobile Monday event held in Lagos, Mobitel‘s COO, Tomi Davies said that there’s nothing like 3G, while explaining how his company’s 4G ‘broadband’ service is one to beat. But we’re wondering if 4G does exist, as it could just be another term to sway Internet consumers.
Thus, I can now define 256kbps which is commonly available today as a percentage of broadband. Basic broadband is actually 4 megabits per second. Even though the internet application on some dongle you can actually get 2MEG, the internet delivered to the consumer is usually between 64kbps to 128kbps.”

This is in spite of $2.24 billion (N336bn) investment spent in deploying underwater cables that are expected to lower bandwidth costs and improve availability. While it is unclear whether or not the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has raised the threshold of the broadband definition, we feel that the NCC should step in now and regulate the so-called broadband operators in Nigeria.

So in Nigeria we get the equivalent of dial-up.  How would these ISPs define 4G?  I've never heard anyone outside of Nigeria refer to 4G as "broadband" though I could be wrong and it could be common usage in some parts of the world.