Yesterday, Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo was present at the official launch of Google’s free Wi-Fi in Abuja. Google Station, as the initiative is officially known, was inaugurated at Wuse Market which is one of the biggest in Nigeria’s capital.
Apart from Wuse Market, Enab Plaza and Banex Plaza were also activated in a planned roll-out across the northern part of Nigeria.
Google Station Abuja was launched in partnership with Backbone Connectivity Network(BCN), an integrated communications and data management company.
At the launch, Head of Partnership Sub-Saharan Africa, Next Billion Users (NBU) for Google Seidu Abdullahi, said this is line with Google’s mission to increase global internet user count from 4 billion to over 5 billion.
What is Google Station?
Google started the Google Station Initiative in 2012 and has since launched in four countries (India, Thailand, Mexico, and Indonesia). The July 2018 launch make Nigeria the 5th beneficiary of the Google Free WiFi service.
As mentioned earlier, the model of the Google Station program is Google associating with a (local) partner and providing software and hardware contribution to actualize the “free WiFi for all” goal.
After thanking the team at Google and BCN, VP Yemi Osinbajo said;
“This is a very exciting day for me. A couple of months ago we were at the Silicon Valley office of Google and the CEO Sundar Pichai told me of Google Station at railway stations in India and I told him that if these work in India, we must get them to markets and places in Nigeria.”
The VP was referring to his July trip with members of the presidential Advisory Group On Technology and Creativity. He said Google Station in Abuja was a manifestation of that discussion with Sundar Pichai in Silicon Valley.