5G Licence: MTN pays $253.86m balance to NCC

MTN Nigeria has paid the remaining $253.86 million to complete the $273.6 million fifth generation (5G) licence fee to the Federal Government as February 24 deadline approaches. This is according to an industry source.

MTN and Mafab Communications were allocated slots for the 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) spectrum dedicated to the deployment of the technology after they emerged winners in the auction conducted by Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in Abuja last year after 11 rounds of bidding that lasted eight hours.

According to the Information Memorandum (IM) for the spectrum auction, the Commission had set $197.4million as reserve price for each slot of the spectrum. Bidders were required to pay 10 per cent of the bid price of $19.74million.

The bid, however, surpassed NCC’s reserve price and went as high as $273.6million.The winners are expected to pay the Winning Bid price, less the Intention-to-Bid Deposit of $19.7million.