Northern Cyprus 5G runs to a licence timetable: 4G spectrum from 2026, full bands in 2028

Northern Cyprus has a 5G timetable written into a licence rather than set by an auction calendar. Kıbrıs Telekom, Turkcell's wholly owned subsidiary there, has been permitted to offer 5G on its 4G spectrum since 7 September 2026, and its licence schedules full 5G across all awarded bands, including 700 MHz and 3600 MHz, for 7 September 2028, with an option to bring that forward to 2027, according to Turkcell's annual report on Form 20-F for 2025.

In mainland Türkiye and Georgia, 5G spectrum was sold in dedicated tenders and auctions and the service followed. In Northern Cyprus, Kıbrıs Telekom bought a combined 4G and 5G licence in 2022, launched 4.5G first and was given staged dates for 5G, the filing shows. The licence record also shows what spectrum has cost in a market of 0.7 million registered subscribers.

The licence record

Method: every row comes from the description of Kıbrıs Telekom in Turkcell's Form 20-F for 2025, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 17 April 2026, and from the filing's risk factors on Northern Cyprus. The filing is the operator's account of its licences; no document from the Northern Cyprus regulator was available to Corridor Signal.

What the spectrum cost

The 2022 licence brought 247 MHz across seven bands for US$19.1 million including VAT, according to the filing. That is about US$77,000 per megahertz, a Corridor Signal calculation, before adjusting for VAT or for the mix of bands, which the filing does not price separately. The 2025 extension added 73.6 MHz in the 900, 1800 and 2100 MHz bands for US$5.9 million excluding VAT, or about US$80,000 per megahertz, payable in six instalments over five years, and pushed the 2G and 3G licence out by 16.5 years to 7 September 2041.

For scale, Turkcell paid US$1,224 million excluding VAT for 160 MHz in mainland Türkiye's 5G tender in October 2025, according to the same filing, or about US$7.7 million per megahertz. The markets differ in size by orders of magnitude, so the comparison shows scale, not value.

Competition and the rules around it

Northern Cyprus's National Regulatory Authority designated Kıbrıs Telekom as having significant market power in mobile access and call origination in July 2021, which obliges it to give access to mobile virtual network operators; two companies held MVNO licences at the end of 2025, the 20-F says. The regulator also sets mobile termination rates, which it raised to TRY 0.06 in October 2023, cut by 37 per cent to TRY 0.04 in November 2024 and raised by 13 per cent in November 2025.

Turkcell names two risks to its position. One is a long-expected restructuring of the incumbent, the TRNC Telecommunications Office, as a public-private partnership; if that went to one of its main competitors or brought a third mobile licence, it would hurt Kıbrıs Telekom's growth, the filing says. The other is the fixed market. In July 2025 the Northern Cyprus authorities signed a protocol with Türkiye for a nationwide fibre network with international submarine links, and Türk Telekom set up a subsidiary to build and run it. Turkcell says its Northern Cyprus brand will use 5G fixed wireless access to compete as a fixed internet provider and aims to resell fibre.

The two dates do different work. The September 2026 date lets Kıbrıs Telekom run 5G on spectrum it already uses for 4G. The 2028 date, or 2027 if the option is used, brings the 700 MHz and 3600 MHz bands into 5G use, which the filing ties to full deployment. Kıbrıs Telekom had laid 69 km of its own fibre by the end of 2025, and Turkcell's tower unit operated 115 towers on the island under right-of-use agreements, according to the filing. With the state-backed fibre network arriving at the same time, the 5G dates set the pace at which a mobile operator can compete for home broadband before fibre reaches most premises.

Neither the 20-F nor any document reviewed says whether the acceleration option will be used. That decision, and the shape of the incumbent's restructuring, are the next things to watch.