MTN Nigeria, Mafab, and Airtel Networks Limited were recently permitted by the NCC to participate in the bidding process.
The three businesses competed in the 5G auction on Monday, with the bidding starting at $199.37 million, much over the NCC’s reserve price of $197.4 million.
The auction closed at $273.6 million for each available lot after around eight hours and 11 rounds of bidding, with MTN and Mafab emerging as winners.
The 11th round bidding was set at $275,904,886. Airtel stayed in the bidding until the last round, when it dropped out.
MTN paid an extra sum of $15.9m to be assigned the preferred lot of Lot One, while Mafab was assigned Lot Two, at no extra cost. In its Information Memorandum, the commission had said it was auctioning two lots of 100 MHz each in the 3.5 GHz band ranging from 3500 – 3600 MHz and 3700 to 3800 MHz.
Mafab, led by Alhaji Musibau Bashiru, is a new entrant in the telecoms sector and was licensed in July 2020. The company has an international data access licence from the NCC. The winners have until February 2022 to pay for the spectrum, or lose it.
According to the commission, if the winner does not hold a Unified Access Service Licence, which is the operational licence for the frequency spectrum, it need to acquire the UASL at an additional fee of N374.6m.
The first six rounds of the auction lasted for 20 minutes and the second five rounds lasted for 10 minutes.
Bidding started at $199.37 in the first round, and increased to $201.37m in the second round.
The third bidding round was ended at $204.39m. By the fourth round, it was at $209.41m, while the fifth bidding round ended at $215.78m; the sixth bidding round ended at $224.41m.
The seventh bidding round was at $231.15m; the eighth round was at $240.39m, while the ninth round ended at $251.21m. The 10th round was at $263.02m before the bidding ended in the 11th round at $275.91m. The last price for each of the 5G spectrum is about $78m above the reserve price.
Meanwhile, Prof. Isa Pantami, the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, has assured stakeholders that 5G would not jeopardize national security.
Pantami has previously spoken during the NCC’s auction of the 3.5 gigahertz spectrum.
According to the minister, 5G would address some of the country’s security issues.
He said, “We have already made a number of giant strides in the development of our digital economy and the development of 5G networks will further support our efforts.
“The analysis revealed that 5G is safe for deployment in Nigeria and would not jeopardize our country’s security,” he continued.
