Ghana awards 5G licenses to Telecel, MTN after slow rollout woes

Ghana has awarded 5G licenses to Telecel Group and MTN Group after the government ended the exclusive wholesale-network model that was previously in place with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd.

As reported by Bloomberg last week, Telecel and MTN have scooped up 5G spectrum licenses after the government overturned the exclusive concession granted to Next Gen Infraco ahead of its scheduled expiry in 2034 because of rollout delays.

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As part of that initial agreement, Reliance Jio subsidiary Radisys was selected to provide the network infrastructure for the 5G network as part of the Next-Gen Infrastructure Company (NGIC) joint venture.

This JV combined Reliance Industries’ Radisys unit, Tech Mahindra, Nokia, and the Ghanaian government, and set out to introduce affordable 5G services in the country.

Telecel Ghana and AT Ghana had agreed to use the 5G network, plus some other local telecom providers. The model proposed by NGIC sought to replicate India’s low-cost mobile data model through sharing network infrastructure.

However, the rollout of this 5G network has been significantly slower than planned, with just 49 5G sites going live as of March, which is well short of the 1,200 set by the government by 2027.

This led to Telecel and MTN acquiring spectrum from the government to launch their own 5G networks instead.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Moh Damush, chief executive officer, Telecel, confirmed that the carrier plans to launch 5G as soon as December.

“We plan to launch the service in December this year on our own network," said Damush.

Telecel snapped up three lots of 2.3-GHz spectrum, though it didn't disclose how much it paid for the spectrum. MTN acquired two lots of 700MHz spectrum and three in the 3GHz band, with each 15-year licence priced at about $100 million, according to its filing.

On the subject of Telecel, the carrier is reportedly in the sights of French telecoms giant Orange. A report today (October 7) by French publication Entrevue notes that Orange is in talks to acquire the 70 percent stake in Telecel Ghana held by Telecel Group. Ghana's government owns the remaining 30 percent. Orange already has a strong footprint across Africa and the Middle East, where it operates in 18 countries.

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