The Minister for Communication and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has defended the government’s strategic decision to forgo auctioning the newly introduced 5G network. The government announced in May 2024 a collaboration with key industry players to roll out 5G within the next six months.
The government’s initiative includes partnerships with leading companies such as Ascend Digital, K-NET, Radisys, Nokia, Tech Mahindra, and other telecommunications firms. This approach, according to the Minister, aims to avoid the pitfalls experienced during the auctioning of the 4G spectrum.
In an exclusive interview with Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show on Citi FM, Owusu-Ekuful explained that the decision stems from lessons learned during the 4G auction, which resulted in MTN dominating the market to the detriment of other operators.
“Government sold spectrum to local operators to do broadband on the understanding that they would be given exclusivity in that space, while mobile network operators did voice and procured data services from them [broadband operators] if they wanted to give those data services to their subscribers.
“After promising them exclusivity, we went ahead and auctioned the 4G to these same big players, who MTN then acquired the spectrum because it has so much more financial muscle than these local entities and so MTN cornered the market. At the price the spectrum was pegged at the time, it was only MTN that could buy it and that made it possible for them to corner the high-speed data market and blow the rest of the operators out of the market.”
She added that the need to fairly distribute data access featured prominently in the government’s decision.
“Monopoly in data services is not good in the way in which all economies are evolving and the need for data to conduct all businesses that we require. No matter whichever sector you are in, you need some amount of internet access to do your work and so all those were factors that led to the decision not to auction the 5G network but to provide a shared infrastructure for all the network operators and even new entrants.”
