InfraCo: MainOne, IHS Consortium clinch license

ITRealms:

The duo of MainOne Company and IHS Consortium have emerged winners of their licenses for the Infrastructure Company (InfraCo) bid opened last year by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), reports ITRealms.

Disclosing this to ITRealms at a one-day industry Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Stakeholders Forum which held at Eko Hotel at the weekend, the Executive Vice Chairman, Dr. Eugene Juwah said MainOne won the license for the Lagos and IHS Consortium won the license for the Lagos North-Central respectively.

ITRealms reports that four operators comprising MainOne, Zinox Telecom, HIS and Trussnet vied for the Lagos region license which NCC divided into two for ease of coverage, since Lagos is the commercial nerve center of the national and center of communication investment in the country.

The four companies had tendered bids for the license in 2014 and in response to a question at the 4^th Industry ICT Stakeholders Forum, Juwah told ITRealms the have concluded and the letter of award of licenses should be on dispatch to respective winners as at the time of filing this report.

This he said, follows the conclusion of the evaluation by NCC, which was delayed due to several reasons, including the mild-break out of Ebola in the country by third quarter of 2014, which has since been contained.

ITRealms recalls that NCC had revealed it would be licensing seven InfraCos for the country, stressing that six will be for the geo-political zones each in Nigeria, while Lagos will have one operator because of its peculiarity.

The Lagos and North Central regions, NCC said would come in the first phase of the licensing, while other five zones namely the North East, North West, South East, South West and South South have been lined up for the second phase.

+Remmy Nweke +MainOne Cable @IHS

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