Nigeria will award new licences to provide fixed-line internet services in early 2013, Reuters reported. The country had 216,000 fixed broadband connections in 2011, according to data from the ITU. Fixed-line licences will be sold via an auction, whereby winning bidders will be those requesting the lowest government subsidies to build the network, Eugene Juwah, CEO of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), told the news agency on the sidelines of a conference in the UAE.

Juwah said the government wants to put in an incentive to bring the price down. He said there will be three tranches. The first two will be to operate the electrical and non-electrical infrastructure, while the third will be for licences to sell services to end-users. All will be sold on a regional basis.

Nigeria will also sell two lots of nationwide spectrum at 2.3 gigahertz primarily for use by WiMax technology, Juwah said, with these sold via a conventional auction by year-end.