On 26 May 2026, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) published a draft Business Rules for Mobile Virtual Network Operations in Nigeria, opening a consultation that closes on 29 June and culminates in a public inquiry on 9 July at the Commission's Abuja annex. The document — a version 2.0 rewrite of the licensing regime the NCC first issued in 2022 — covers interconnection, numbering, SIM and eSIM management, and the network-hosting agreements that govern how a virtual operator rents capacity from a host network. It is a dense, technical instrument. It is also, in its core design, a genuinely pro-competition piece of market plumbing — which makes the few places it over-reaches worth flagging before the rules harden.
A four-year-old market that never launched
The case for intervention is strong, and regulators deserve credit for confronting it directly. Nigeria created an MVNO licence class in August 2022 under the Licensing Framework for the Establishment of Mobile Virtual Network Operators, aiming to let resellers and niche players ride on the four big networks — MTN, Airtel, Glo and 9mobile — to reach underserved customers and deepen financial inclusion. The Commission issued licences enthusiastically: 25 firms by mid-2023 and roughly 40 by 2026, spread across tiers two to five, with not a single tier-one licensee. Yet almost none of those operators actually launched commercial service. The bottleneck was not demand or capital; it was access. Host networks had little incentive to onboard rivals onto their towers and, with no binding rules, could let commercial negotiations drift indefinitely.
That is a textbook market failure: an incumbent controlling an essential facility has every reason to stall a competitor that depends on it. When the dominant party can simply not return calls, 'negotiate in good faith' is not a remedy. So the strongest parts of the draft are the ones that put a clock on the process.
The good: deadlines and fair-access obligations
Under the new rules, a host network operator must acknowledge an MVNO's hosting request within 10 days, give a substantive response on technical readiness within 20 days, and conclude both commercial and technical agreements within a maximum of 120 days from a formal request, according to the draft and reporting on it. The framework pairs these timelines with anti-discrimination and fair-access duties so a host cannot quietly offer worse terms to a virtual rival than to its own retail arm.
This is proportionate regulation done well. It does not dictate business models, cap profits, or mandate technology. It simply removes the incumbent's ability to win by delay, then steps back. The tiering structure is similarly sensible: the draft formalises five tiers of operator, and crucially lets higher-tier MVNOs (broadly tiers three to five) own a unique Mobile Network Code rather than borrowing number ranges from their host — a portability and independence gain that makes serious infrastructure investment viable.
The risk: from referee to price-setter
Where the draft drifts from light-touch market design is on pricing. To stop dominant operators from using predatory wholesale rates to squeeze entrants, the NCC proposes benchmark pricing structures for data, voice, SMS and USSD. The instinct is defensible — margin squeeze is a real abuse — but fixed regulatory benchmarks are a blunt tool that can ossify a fast-moving market and dampen a host's incentive to invest in the very capacity MVNOs need. A lighter alternative achieves the same protection: require hosts to publish a reference wholesale offer, mandate non-discrimination against the host's own retail prices, and route disputes to fast binding arbitration. That polices the abuse without installing the regulator as a permanent price-setter.
The caution: SIM and eSIM data as a surveillance back door
The draft also loads MVNOs with SIM and eSIM obligations — remote subscriber verification, customer onboarding controls, and audit-trail maintenance. As consumer-protection and anti-fraud measures these are reasonable. But they do not arrive on a blank slate. They layer onto Nigeria's already heavy compliance-and-surveillance stack: the mandatory NIN-to-SIM linkage and the Cybercrimes Act, whose vague provisions have been used to detain journalists and critics despite a 2024 amendment meant to narrow them. Every new mandate to retain verification records and audit trails expands the pool of subscriber data available for access requests. The NCC should keep KYC requirements narrow, time-limit retention, and explicitly bar these audit trails from becoming a standing channel for content-related or speech-policing demands. Proportionate identity verification is one thing; building MVNO compliance into a broader apparatus that has already chilled online expression is another.
What stakeholders should push for
The June–July consultation is a real opportunity, and the NCC's transparent process deserves engagement rather than reflexive opposition. The deadlines, fair-access duties and number-ownership rules should survive intact — they are exactly the kind of structural fix a regulator is for. The pricing benchmarks should be softened into transparency-plus-arbitration. And the SIM/eSIM data duties should be written with privacy guardrails on their face, not left to later interpretation. Get those three calibrations right and Nigeria could finally turn 40 paper licences into a living, competitive market — proof that proportionate rules, not heavier ones, are what unlock innovation.