Niger kicks off public consultation on 5G spectrum plan

Details: John Tanner; Category: Regulation; 21 July 2026; 788 views

Niger’s telecoms regulator ARCEP launched a public consultation on Monday to seek input on the country’s spectrum plan should be reorganised to enable deployment of 5G services.

The consultation, which runs from now until the end of next month, seeks to develop a transition plan to implement the National Frequency Allocation Plan (PNAF) 2025, which was officially adopted by ARCEP in June to align Niger's spectrum framework with the latest ITU regulations between 2027 and 2029.

ARCEP is focusing on three spectrum bands for 5G, starting with the 600-MHz band, which is currently used mostly for digital terrestrial television. Given the growing popularity of OTT video services, ARCEP proposes to reallocate the band for 4G and 5G, as its propagation range would enable such services to be deployed quickly and cost-efficiently to to rural areas.

Similarly, ARCEP wants to release blocks of the 700 MHz band (which is also partly being used by broadcasters) for 4G and 5G because of its greater coverage range.

ARCEP also proposes to clear wide frequency blocks in the 3.5 GHz band for 5G. The regulator said it will look at ways to enable fixed wireless access (FWA) service providers currently using that band to coexist with 5G services, though another option on the table is moving them to the 6 GHz band.

The public consultation document says that ARCEP will spend the next two years sorting out how to allocate these bands (e.g. by auction or another mechanism), as well as things like licence conditions, quality of service metrics and investment requirements.

That also means Niger is unlikely to see 5G deployments of any kind before at least 2030.

The latest statistics from the ITU say that 4G only covered around 40% of the country’s population at the end of 2024, although that figure was just 17.4% in 2022. 2G is the most widely deployed mobile technology in Niger with 87% coverage.