News
Regulator re-opens spectrum sale process a year after it hit the pause button, retains US$224m reserve price.
Nigeria’s telecoms regulator on Friday shared its plans to auction off spectrum in the 2.6 GHz band for mobile broadband services in May, restarting a process it put on hold a year ago.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said it aims to carry out the auction during the week beginning 16 May 2016 and has given interested parties until the close of business on 29 April to submit their applications.
The regulator plans to sell 14 lots of 2 x 5 MHz of frequencies at a reserve price of US$16 million per lot, meaning it expects to generate a minimum of $224 million (€202 million) from the process, presuming all lots are taken up.
The NCC has been working on the 2.6-GHz sale for some time. It has a history of postponing the auction and appears to have reserved the right to do so again.
"The timetable is subject to change," the regulator said in the information memorandum it published on Friday. "Interested parties are therefore advised to visit the Commission’s website on a regular basis to ensure they have the latest information."
The NCC had intended to carry out the auction in late 2014, but delayed it until May 2015 for administrative reasons, saying it wanted to ensure the licences would be available to the winners as soon as the process was concluded.
Then, in March last year, it delayed the auction indefinitely, without giving a reason for its decision.
Presuming it goes ahead as planned, the auction will be open to existing and new operators alike, although any spectrum winner that does not already hold a unified access service licence (USAL) will be required to pay 374.6 million naira (€1.7 million/$1.9 million) to obtain one.
Nigeria is home to four GSM operators, which together served 148.7 million customers at the end of 2015. MTN leads the market with a 42% share, while Glo and Airtel claim 22% and 21% respectively, and EMTS brings up the rear with 15%.
The country also has 2.1 million CDMA users and fewer than 200,000 fixed and fixed wireless customers.
