By Chinenye Anuforo
Provisional winners of the 3.5 Gigahertz (GHz) spectrum licence, MTN Communications Nigeria Plc and Mafab Communications Limited, have made their full payment of $273.6 million each for the 5G Spectrum license to the Nigerian Communications Commission.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta, officially confirmed the payment status yesterday just as the deadline set for the two winners of the spectrum auction elapsed.
As part of the auction process emplaced by the Commission in the Information Memorandum (IM), three companies, namely MTN Nigeria, Mafab Communications Ltd and Airtel Networks Ltd submitted bids with an initial bid deposit (IBD) of $19.74 million, representing 10 per cent of the Reserve Price of the 3.5GHz Spectrum by the close of the Bid submission date of November 29, 2021.
Following the successful auction on December 13, 2021 and the emergence of MTN and Mafab as winners, they were required to pay the balance of the bid amount of $253.86 million on or before February 24, 2022.
However, aside the $273.6 million payment, MTN paid additional $15.9 million, being the bidding sum it offered at the assignment state of the spectrum auction, making it clinch its preferred Lot 1 (3500-3600 Megahertz-MHz) in the 3.5Ghz spectrum; while, Mafab Communications, which bided lower at the assignment stage, consequentially settled with Lot 2 (3700-3800Mhz) at no extra cost.