The Chief Executive Officer, MTN Nigeria, Karl Toriola, has announced their plans to deploy the fifth-generation network in Nigeria during the launch of the MTN Media Innovation Programme on Wednesday 27th April in Lagos. He said,
“Nigeria is probably the first, maybe the second, to do a proper 5G spectrum auction with enough bandwidth to give real 5G service and we must thank the minister and the NCC for this.”
The 5G services are slated to go live in Nigeria as early as the second half of 2022 as the telco is ready for it. The announcement came after MTN paid its spectrum license fee prior to the proposition of the Nigerian Communications Commission in its Draft Information Memorandum on the 3.5 GHz Spectrum Auction.
In the Memorandum, the commission also said that 5G would be launched in six states within the first two years of deployment.
Recall that In December 2021, Mafab Communications Ltd and MTN Nigeria Plc, emerged as the two successful winners of the 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) spectrum auction for the deployment of Fifth Generation (5G) technology to support the deployment of broadband services in Nigeria after 11 rounds of bidding that lasted eight hours. The winners of the bid for the 3.5GHz 5G spectrum, MTN and Mafab have each completed payment of the $273.6m license fee required by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). However, Mafab Communications has not disclosed any plan for its 5G deployment after winning the auction and paying the license fee.
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MTN and Pan-Atlantic University also announced the launch of the MTN Media Innovation Programme, which will be spearheaded by the university’s department of Media and Communication. The program is for Nigerian media practitioners to aid the development of the nation’s changing media scene and make it more sustainable. It is an asix-month, fully funded fellowship created to provide fellows with a greater understanding of Nigeria’s tech ecosystem and its connection with media. MTN is driven by the belief that everyone deserves to benefit from the modern connected world and is using its platform to drive accelerated growth by providing leading digital solutions for the development of Nigeria. Based on this belief, MTN Nigeria will continue to do its best to provide remarkable solutions at remarkable speeds, boosted by new technologies. Thus, they must support developments in the Nigerian media space with world-class infrastructure and initiate capacity-building programs to foster innovation in media practice.
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