Nigeria’s leading mobile telecommunication firm, MTN has acquired a N34bn licence to provide digital pay television broadcasting services in Nigeria.
According to The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) confirmed this on Wednesday, saying it had successfully licensed MTN Nigeria Ltd to use a part of the 700 MHz to provide digital pay TV broadcasting services.
The Director-General, NBC, Mr. Emeka Mba
Gentlemen of the Press, I’m pleased to inform you that we have successfully licensed MTN Nigeria Ltd to use a part of the 700 MHz to provide digital pay TV broadcasting services.
We have thus raised 34 Billion Naira, slightly less than 50% of our budget. I am pleased to inform you, also, that through this singular move, Nigeria has once again pointed the way for other African countries struggling with the effort of finding financing for their own digital switchover programmes.
It may be necessary to clarify that the use of the band, 470 – 862MHz solely for UHF Television Broadcasting Service on a primary basis in Nigeria predates both the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). As a matter of fact, most Administrations in ITU Region 1 use the entire 470 – 862 MHz for UHF Television Broadcasting prior to ITU WRC-2007 conference.
In 2006, ITU planned the entire 470 – 862MHz frequency band for Digital UHF Television Broadcasting for ITU Region 1 to which the Nigerian Administration belongs. As a matter of fact, the planning of 470 – 862MHz frequency band for Digital UHF Television is referred to in the ITU circle as GE-06 Plan and after the Signing of the Agreements resulting from this Plan it is now referred to as the GE-06 Agreement.
This should clear any doubts as to where these frequencies belong until after the completion of the digital switch over.
It is now, also, my pleasure to announce to you the new switchover critical milestones ahead of us and our planned timelines for achieving them:
With MTN joining the digital broadcasting space, Nigerians can only hope that this will increase competition in a space largely dominated by DSTV. MTN is also well positioned to rely on its mobile scale and presence to even garner more subscribers.
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