Nigerian Telecommunications operators have expressed worry over the reserved price of N75 billion [ about $197.4million} as starting point for the 5G license auction billed to take place on December 13, 2021.
NCC has scheduled December 10 for the mock auction, while the actual auction is fixed for December 13, 2021.
Interested operators are expected to pay 10 per cent of the reserved price of $197.4 million to qualify to participate in the auction.
Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria {ALTON} Engineer Gbenga Adebayo expressed his concern at the Stakeholders engagement forum on the draft information memorandum for 3.5 Hgz Spectrum auction organized by the Nigerian Communications Commission {NCC}.
Though Adebayo said the industry was committed to supporting the NCC to achieve its goals, the operators are a bit concerned about the cost of 5G and the issue needs to be dealt with going forward.
Though Adebayo spoke for all the telcos, individual companies have sent their queries to the NCC on the high price of the license fee and other issues which they want the Commission to look into.
The GSM Association, the global body for all GSM companies has also asked the NCC to bring down the reserved price.
It should be recalled that the reserved price for the GSM auction in 2001 was put at $100million. Operators ended up paying $285 million at the end of the auction that took place in January of that year.
The worries of telecom operators were responded to at the ongoing forum.
The stakeholders ‘forum holding in Lagos is part of activities lined up for the implementation of the Fifth Generation (5G) Technology Deployment Plan in the country.
The forum will afford industry stakeholders the opportunity to discuss the draft Information Memorandum (IM) for the upcoming auction of the 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) spectrum band.
The Information Memorandum (IM) is a comprehensive document, which defines the process employed by the Commission for the auctioning of the 3.5GHz spectrum band. It also provides information on the Nigerian telecommunications market, details of the spectrum to be made available, the pre-qualification process, the auction process as well as the indicative timetable.
It should be noted however that Nigeria is not the first country to put 5G for auction.
Several countries, among them Germany have auction 5G spectrum.
In Germany, for instance, four operators paid 6.55 billion EUR for the 5G spectrum, though Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone Germany criticized the high prices of the country’s auction.
