BOSTON-Econet Nigeria Ltd. has paid for its digital mobile license, thus becoming the third company after NITEL and MTN Nigeria Limited to pay for its licenses in Nigeria.
Communications Investment Limited, which was one of the three winners at the last digital mobile license auction in Abuja, is expected to follow. Failure to pay the $285 million would mean losing the initial $20 million deposit.
In a statement signed by Atim Mkposit, Econet said it paid the $285 million fee to the Nigerian Communications Commission to complete the last phase of the license bid. “We have paid our license fee to the NCC and this completes the last phase of our acquisition of the license. It lays the groundwork for Econet to launch its national network in Nigeria,” he said.
The company paid 40 percent of the $285 million (less the $20 million pre-qualification fee) in New York and the balance of 60 percent in Naira through First Bank to the Central Bank of Nigeria. Econet said having paid the fees, it was implementing a multipronged approach to ensure the successful launch of the network.
The company, which has already started recruiting, is planning for an initial subscriber base of 100,000 and will expand its subscriber base to 400,000 lines by the end of the year. Econet has put in place a comprehensive financing and technical program to launch its network across the country within the next few months and will seek to be listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange within 12 months of starting operations. The listing would be similar to the one carried out by Econet’s sister company in Zimbabwe, Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, which went to the stock exchange three months after launching its network in July 1998.
NITEL and MTN were the first two companies to pay their license fees to the NCC. NITEL paid $285million as it did not pay the initial pre-qualification deposit of $20million. MTN paid more than $260 million having earlier paid $20 million as pre-qualification fee. It pledged to deploy a first batch of 250,000 to 300,000 mobile telephone lines in the immediate future.
The NCC will realize $1.14 billion from the license fees.
