Tunisia’s three biggest mobile operators – Tunisie Telecom, Orange Tunisie and Ooredoo Tunisia – reportedly submitted their applications for 5G licences on Monday, with approval expected in the next three weeks.
According to a report from Agency Ecofin, the technical committee created by the Ministry of Communication Technologies to vet the applications will study the technical files and financials for each applicant. Once that process is finalised, applicants who pass muster should be granted the licences around the middle of next month.
Each licence is good for 15 years, and comes with 5 MHz of duplexed spectrum in the 700-MHz band, and 100 MHz of TDD spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band for 5G usage. The ministry has also set aside three 20 MHz blocks that will be made available at the request of operators. Other 5G frequency bands are set to be released in later phases.
The ministry kicked off the tender process for the 5G licences in June, with the aim of seeing commercial 5G services launched in some form by November this year. In the meantime, Tunisian telcos have also been busy getting ready for 5G – last year, Ooredoo Tunisia contracted Nokia to upgrade its network RANs to be 5G-ready.
That said, it may take time for 5G services to take off, depending on how much coverage is initially available.
An even bigger issue is device compatibility. According to Ecofin, citing year-end 2023 stats from the National Telecommunications Authority (INTT), a little over 9 million mobile subscribers in Tunisia use smartphones. That works out to 73% of the mobile device market, but of that number, only 652,000 are 5G-compatible.
