Ghana’s National Communications Authority has just named the operators cleared to bid for 5G spectrum, a concrete step forward in a rollout that has otherwise been defined by missed deadlines. MTN Ghana, Telecel Ghana, and Goal Telecoms all qualified from four applications received by the extended August 27 deadline, while a fourth applicant, Infrava, was rejected. The announcement landed a day after a seven-member Ericsson delegation, led by Patrick Johansson, President and Head of Market Area Europe, Middle East and Africa, paid a courtesy visit to the NCA in Accra, a visit that put the pressure the regulator is under into sharp focus: Ghana has committed to 70% 5G population coverage by March 2027, timed deliberately to coincide with the country’s 70th independence anniversary, and the clock has less than 18 months left to run.
Why the Government Had to Change Course
Ghana’s original approach was a single-provider wholesale model, with Next Gen Infraco, known as NGIC, appointed the exclusive infrastructure provider meant to build shared 5G infrastructure that multiple operators could plug into rather than each carrier duplicating towers across the same areas. NGIC’s backing wasn’t obscure either, the company is tied to Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, giving the initial exclusivity deal real financial weight behind it. That weight didn’t translate into delivery. NGIC missed a June 2025 deadline to launch commercial services, and by early 2026 had built just 49 live sites against a planned 4,400, according to industry reporting. Even after NGIC’s network technically went live in March 2026 across parts of Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale, no Ghanaian telecom operator had actually connected to it to offer commercial 5G service, a network built with nobody using it yet.
The Shift to a Hybrid Model
Faced with that track record, Communications, Digital Technology and Innovation Minister Sam Nartey George announced in February 2026 that Cabinet had decided to end NGIC’s exclusivity entirely, moving to a hybrid model that lets operators deploy their own 5G networks alongside the existing shared wholesale infrastructure rather than depending on NGIC alone. “We cannot give spectrum without firm commitments to rural connectivity,” George said at the time, adding that rollout obligations would be written directly into licence conditions rather than left as informal expectations. The NCA formally amended NGIC’s licence to remove its exclusivity on July 15, and opened its Request for Applications for spectrum across the 700MHz, 2.3GHz, and 3GHz mid bands the very next day.
What the Spectrum Actually Costs
The auction carries real money attached to it. Reported pricing puts the 700MHz band starting around $36 million per lot and running as high as $140 million, the 3GHz band at roughly $24 million per lot for high-capacity urban networks, and the 2.3GHz band priced lower, around $10 million per lot, specifically to make room for smaller local providers rather than pricing the field down to only the biggest players. MTN Ghana, as the market leader with Significant Market Power status, faces a 40% premium on premium bands specifically designed to prevent it from using its existing scale to crowd out competition in the new spectrum allocation. Altogether, the process represents roughly $230 million in competitive bidding, a meaningfully different structure than simply handing infrastructure to one company and hoping for the best.
Who Actually Qualified, and Who Didn’t
Eligibility for the process was deliberately broad, open to licensed mobile network operators, mobile virtual network operators, broadband wireless access providers, internet service providers, and wholly Ghanaian-owned new entrants. In practice, only three of four applicants made it through: MTN Ghana, Telecel Ghana, and Goal Telecoms, while Infrava did not qualify. MTN has already signalled its own deployment plan, aiming to combine its 700MHz and 3500MHz holdings to deliver Fixed Wireless Access, a technology that could extend broadband-quality coverage into areas that would otherwise wait years for fibre.
Why This Is Genuinely Hard to Pull Off
Even with a workable licensing structure finally in place, the physical scale of what’s being attempted shouldn’t be underestimated. A 2022 Ericsson study estimated the base cost of deploying 5G nationwide in Ghana at between $3 billion and $8 billion, with a further 20% to 35% required on top of that to extend coverage across the entire country rather than just its major cities. MTN itself isn’t new to this challenge either, having invested in early 5G infrastructure before quietly halting its own pilot back in 2022 for reasons that were never fully explained, a reminder that Ghana’s 5G ambitions have stalled before under less time pressure than they’re facing now.
What Ericsson’s Visit Signals
This week’s meeting reinforced where NCA’s priorities sit heading into the next phase. Deputy Director General for Technical Operations Suleman Salifu told the Ericsson delegation that rollout would continue to be guided by strong regulatory oversight, clear performance expectations, and measurable service outcomes, alongside stronger compliance monitoring to hold operators to their coverage and quality commitments. He also raised the importance of robust, secure infrastructure for national emergency communications specifically, a detail that signals 5G here is being framed as critical infrastructure, not just a consumer upgrade. Ericsson’s Majda Lahlou Kassi, Customer Unit Head for West and Southern Africa, called the shift to competitive licensing a positive development and reaffirmed the company’s willingness to support the rollout through knowledge sharing in cybersecurity, network resilience, AI, and digital skills, positioning Ericsson as a technical partner for whichever operators actually win spectrum.
The Honest Read on the Timeline
George has acknowledged directly that achieving 70% coverage within roughly a year is a steep aspiration, and independent analysis has been blunter still, with some industry commentary describing the target as approaching physically impossible given how much tower construction, spectrum deployment, and network testing still has to happen in a country where the previous approach barely got off the ground. With licence awards from the RFA process still pending and less than 18 months left on the clock, the qualification of MTN, Telecel, and Goal Telecoms this week is real progress after a genuinely difficult first phase, but it’s still several steps removed from actual towers going up and phones connecting to them. Whether Ghana’s pivot to competitive licensing can compress years of typical infrastructure buildout into little more than a year is the question the coming months will actually answer, not this week’s announcement.
