Nigerians have been told to
anticipate the availability of 5G services across the country by the
fourth quarter of 2022.
The Nigerian Communications
Commission, NCC made this known on Thursday while giving an update on the
deployment of the new technology.
Speaking at a capacity
building workshop organized for ICT journalists by the commission in Abuja
yesterday, Head, Spectrum Administration, NCC, Usman Aliyu, said cleaning
of the Bands was ongoing with the migration of the FSS users from the 3.4-3.8
GHz spectrum.
This according to him is a
follow-up to the ratification of the use of the Nigerian Communications
Satellite by the National Frequency Management Council.
When deployed, he said a lot
of services would be enhanced with a resultant effect on the economic growth of
the nation in the areas of education, health, financial services and
improvement in the quality of service.
Aliyu boasts that Nigeria
became the first country in Africa to successfully conduct a full 5G spectrum
auction without the services of a consultant and the first software auction to
be conducted since 2001.
He said: “5G auction committee
was constituted, information memorandum was developed, consultation on
memorandum carried out, key stakeholders responded, corrections were made on IM
before the auction.
“Five options were made and
two were made available. Hopefully by Q4 this year, we should have 5G services
in the country. The current status involves inflation and increases in the
exchange rate that affects the cost of services; quality and adequate power
supply, relocating of services, guard band provision, coordination with
neighbouring countries.”
The 5G Spectrum auction of the
3.45 GHz spectrum was conducted in late 2021.
The exercise went through 11
rounds and exceeded the revenue projection from the reserve price of
$199,374,000.
The auction process came to an
end when MTN and Mafab posted an exit bid of $273 million, while Airtel posted
a final bid of $270 million.
The auction generated proceeds
of $22.5 billion in total.
Meanwhile, the Director of
Public Affairs of NCC, Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde, who spoke earlier at the
workshop, reiterated the commitment of the commission to maintaining the
age-long tradition of mutually beneficial relationships with the media.
He said that the meeting, in a
sense, amplifies a continuation age-long tradition of maintaining strong and
mutually beneficial relationships with the media as partners of the commission
and appreciated the contributions of the media to the visibility of the
commission as well as the development of the Nigerian telecom sector.
