Mauritania Awards New Satellite Communications Licences to Strengthen National Connectivity
Mauritania’s telecommunications regulator, the Autorité de Régulation (ARE), has announced the provisional award of new licences to provide personal mobile satellite communications services and to sell satellite capacity in the country, following a competitive tender process launched in January 2026.
A Competitive Tender Process
The call for applications, issued on 22 January 2026, attracted significant interest from both national and international operators, with 13 companies withdrawing the tender dossier. By the close of the submission period, nine offers had been received across the two licence categories.
Lot 1 covers the provision of personal mobile satellite communications services limited to geostationary orbit systems, while Lot 2 covers the sale of satellite capacity in Mauritania. Following a full evaluation process covering technical and financial assessment, the rankings were as follows.
For Lot 1, BRAINSAT ranked first with a bid of USD 800,000, followed by VMD at USD 50,000, and Guimi Multi Services in third position. For Lot 2, BRAINSAT again ranked first with a bid of USD 3,000,000, followed by Mattel, Mauritel, Wigo, and VMD, respectively. The submission from WIGO for Lot 1 was declared inadmissible.
Provisional Awards and Conditions
ARE has declared BRAINSAT and VMD provisional awardees for Lot 1, and BRAINSAT and Mattel provisional awardees for Lot 2. However, the provisional awards for VMD and Mattel are conditional on both companies aligning their financial offers with the regulator’s reference prices: USD 800,000 for Lot 1 and USD 3,000,000 for Lot 2. Should either company decline to align, the tender regulations provide for the next-ranked bidder to be approached in their place.
Connectivity in Context
The licensing round comes at a moment when Mauritania’s digital landscape remains uneven. With a total population of approximately 5.3 million, according to DataReportal, internet penetration stood at 37.4%, with around 2.00 million individuals online, pointing to a considerable connectivity gap that satellite services are well placed to help address.