By Emmanuel Elebeke

Although the recent licence acquisition of the 2.6GHz spectrum by MTN Nigeria has been met with much debate, the Nigeria Communications Commission, NCC, believes that it will give a boost to the country’s current Broadband Drive.

According to the NCC, the deployment of the spectrum by MTN will trigger another revolution in the nation’s telecoms space and will further unlock  the full opportunities inherent in the sector.

Recently, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, Prof. Umar Dambatta pointed out that the band will “provide an opportunity to meet rapidly rising demand  for capacity to deliver mobile broadband services on a widespread, common basis across the world.”

The deployment of the spectrum in the view of the NCC is also expected to bring in a lot of ease in roaming and inter-operability of services on a global basis. The 2.6GHz band is said to be unique as it includes a substantial amount of spectrum that has been allocated on a primary basis in all three ITU regions for terrestrial mobile communications.

Other benefits expected from the spectrum are: offering the potential for economic reuse and sharing of the substantial existing physical and proven operational infrastructure of 3GPP and 3GPP2  mobile operators; support service neutrality to facilitate innovation in services for the benefit of customers; facilitates effective and efficient competition between equipment, device and applications and service vendors to the benefits of customers.

The spectrum guarantees superior performance for wireless networks, especially fourth-generation (4G)/long-term evolution (LTE) services. Nigeria is one of the 28 African countries that offers 4G/LTE services but suffers very low rate of penetration in major parts of the country.

MTN said it complied with the provision of the bid agreement for the 2.6 GHz auction, paid N18.96-billion to the NCC and had subsequently been issued a letter of award.