MTN Nigeria has paid the remaining $253.86 million to complete the $273.6 million fifth generation (5G) licence fee to the Federal Government before the February 24 deadline, an industry source said on Thursday.
MTN and Mafab Communications were allocated slots for the 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) spectrum dedicated to the deployment of the technology after emerging winners 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.
But the bid surpassed NCC’s reserve price and went as high as $273.6million.
Accordingly, the winners are expected to pay the Winning Bid price, less the Intention-to-Bid Deposit of $19.7million.