ATCON pushes for secondary, free spectrum market

By ADEDEJI ADEYEMI FAKOREDE

THE Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) ‎has expressed deep concern about how the frequency spectrum is being managed in Nigeria.

In a speech presented during a visit to management of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in Abuja, Engineer Lanre Ajayi, president of ATCON, said that while the members are delight over the positive development in our industry, which has been identified as the fastest growing sector of the Nigerian economy, the association has some concerns.

Ajayi who acknowledged that the success is not without the professional way the NCC has been regulating the industry, thanked the Commission for being steadfast and being professional.

However, the ATCON president said that inspite of these positive developments, they would like to express a deep concern about how the frequency spectrum is being managed in Nigeria, not only by NCC but by other entities concerned with frequency management, including the National Frequency Management Board (NFMB).

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He said, “We expected the NFMB to proactively discharge its responsibility. But that seems not to be the case in its handling of 700 MHZ recently sold by the Nigeria Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to MTN. It was expected that when frequencies that were previously allocated to an agency of Government is no longer of relevance to that agency and such frequency has been freed, we expect an immediate re-allocation of such frequencies to other appropriate Government agencies for assingning to deserving operators.

“If such measure had been taken the mess that is being reported in the sale of the spectrum would have been avoided. We are also disturbed that NCC has not been able to assign spectrum to operators for a long while. Past attempts to assign 2, 6 Ghz have failed”.

He said that ATCON holds the opinion that the Nigerian market is matured enough to have a secondary spectrum market. “Presently, there is large number of idle spectrums in custody of some operators while numerous investors are yearning for spectrum to roll out services. Since it takes a lot of hurdles to retrieve such spectrum from the owners, it makes sense to allow such owners sell to new buyers who may have a need for the spectrum.”

On free spectrum, he said, “As a strategy to attract small operators to unserved and underserved areas, we would like to recommend to NCC to make available some spectrum to operators for free. Big operators are mostly focused on commercial and very productive population centers.

“Small operators can easily mobilise to service small communities if appropriate incentives are given. Some countries in the world, including the United States, give unlicensed or lite licensed frequencies to operators to attract them to underserved or unserved communities and we would like to recommend this to NCC”.