Sam George: I will hold NGIC to June deadline for 5G rollout

Sam George, Minister of Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations

Minister of Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations, Samuel Nartey George says he will hold Next Generation Infrastructure Company (NGIC) to the June deadline they gave him to make 5G go live in Ghana.

He said NGIC initially gave him a May 2025 deadline during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona earlier this year, but they later changed the deadline to June this year and that is what he is going by.

The Minister was speaking on The Point of View with Bernard Avle on Channel1 TV on Monday.

NGIC is a the sole operator granted a 10-year exclusive license to build and operate and universal access network for the nationwide rollout of 4G and 5G in Ghana. They got the license in 2024, and so until 2034, no other operator has the right to rollout a 5G network without recourse to NGIC.

They officially launched the network in November 2024, announcing their readiness to connect with telcos, ISPs (internet service providers) and other entities for the rollout of 5G in Ghana. The initial deadline for rollout, as per what the former Minister said, was December 2024. It then changed to January 2025. Now there is a firm promise to go live in June 2025.

Techfocus24 gathered that so far, NGIC has at least 16 cell sites provisioned for 5G ready, and both their primary and secondary core networks, network operations centre (NOC) and data centres have been duly inspected by the National Communications Authority (NCA).

According to Sam George, the company assured him that by June they would have rolled out at least 350 cell sites, comprising of 200-250 sites in Accra and 100-150 sites in Kumasi, out of which at least 50 will be 5G sites, adding that he is looking forward to nothing less than what they promised.

Possible Amendment of NGIC License

Asked what he will do if NGIC does not meet the June deadline, the Minister said “I am not a fan of terminating contracts because of the [financial] implications it has for the state, but if June comes and the story is the same we are going to have a different conversion with all options on the table. I will be open to renegotiation and restructuring of the licensing conditions.”

The Minister also said NGIC cannot hold Ghanaians to ransom forever so if they do not meet the deadline, the industry regulator, NCA, has the legal right to amend the terms of the license.

No Consumer Market Case for 5G

According to Sam George, as of today, 5G does not really have a consumer market case because the commercialization of it does not lie in individuals using it to download and stream movies, or to make video calls, but rather it is industry specific, with use cases like tele-medicine, mining, ports operations, offshore oil drilling among other such things.

He therefore argued that if the fundamental network challenges of the various telcos are not fixed and they are allowed to jump unto 5G platforms, that in itself will not deliver any value to the public.

For instance, currently, Telecel Ghana and AT Ghana are in the process of connecting with NGIC for the rollout of 5G service. But Sam George noted that the AT Ghana core network and billing system are in an “end of life state”, capable of doing only 3G, and not 4G and 5G.

He said the conversation around AT Ghana now is to give them some quasi-network to run on and not 5G.

Current State of Affairs at NGIC 

Meanwhile, Techfocus24 gathered that there are delays from regulator, preventing NGIC from commencing commercial operations, which the Minister did mention that he has been informed about.

Per our information, the critical pending regulatory issues standing in the way of a smooth and timely launch of 5G in Ghana include, resolution of spectrum interference issues, approval of one Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) and 1,000 SIMs for testing and provisioning, clarity on the connecting entity process for ISPs (internet service providers), and network certification/report following the NOC and redundancy site inspection by NCA.

Each of these outstanding items is said to be interdependent and directly impacts NGIC’s ability to fulfil its mandate of delivering nationwide 4G and 5G infrastructure as a wholesale service. Without timely resolution, it will therefore be difficult to guarantee a secure, high-quality, and fully compliant network for mobile network operators, ISPs, and other ecosystem partners who depend on the NGIC platform to extend next-generation connectivity to the public.

Source: techfocus24.com