By Emmanuel Elebeke

ABUJA—Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC says it is hopeful that 5G services would be available by the fourth quarter of this year across the country.

Head, Spectrum Administration, NCC, Usman Aliyu, disclosed this, yesterday, while speaking on 5G deployment at a capacity building workshop organized for ICT journalist by the commission in Abuja.

He said cleaning of the Bands was ongoing with the migration of the FSS users from 3.4-3.8 GHz spectrum, following the ratification of the use of Nigerian Communications Satellite by the National Frequency Management Council.

When deployed, he said a lot of services would be enhanced with resultant effect on the economic growth of the nation in the areas of education, health, financial services and improvement  in the quality of service.

With the successful auction of the 5G spectrum last year, Aliyu said Nigeria became the first country in Africa to successfully conduct a full 5G spectrum auction without the services of a consultant and first software auction to be conducted since 2001.

“5G auction committee was constituted, information memorandum was developed, consultation on memorandum carried out, key stakeholders responded, corrections were made on IM before auction.

“Five options were made ad two were made available.  Hopefully by Q4 this year, we should have 5G services in the country. The current status involves inflation and increase in exchange rate  that affects cost of services; quality and adequate power supply, relocating of services, guard band provision, coordination with neighboring countries,” he said.

Recall that the 5G Spectrum auction of 3.45 GHz spectrum was conducted in late 2021 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.

Earlier in his welcome address, the Director of Public Affairs of NCC, Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde, reiterated its commitment to maintaining the age-long tradition of mutually beneficial relationship 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 visibility of the commission as well as the development of the Nigerian telecom sector.