Mobile telephony: Etisalat’s planned launch set to reshape sector
By Jonah Iboma
The growth recorded in Nigeria’s telecommunications sector in the past eight years has attracted global interest.
For a country that has been enmeshed in unstable political and economic system for many years, the development represents a pleasant departure from the negative trends that the country had been associated with. It also opened the eyes of the world to the country’s potential.
However, the past seven years have presented mixed blessings for telecommunication service users.
While operators have offered solutions to many of the problems of users through the several innovations, the quality of service and associated costs have also led to many disappointments.
So, the decision of the Mubadala Development Company of the United Arab Emirates to invest $400m to secure a GSM licence in Nigerian 2007, had been viewed by many as one of the needed solutions to the limited competition in the country’s telecom sector.
The coming of Mubadala led to the entry of Etisalat, a leading mobile phone operator in the Middle East and Africa, into the country under a partnership agreement with Mubadala to implement the Digital Mobile Licence.
With the rollout delayed a bit longer than expected, the firm has, however, now stated that it is on the verge of a network rollout by Etisalat, the operator of the licence in Nigeria.
A glimpse into the services that it will offer emerged during a visit to the firm’s office complex at the Smart Village, Egypt’s digital technology centre it the recently concluded International Telecommunications Union Telecom Africa Summit in Cairo.
In an interview at the event, the Chief Executive Officer, Etisalat Nigeria, Mr. Saoud Al Shamsi, said the company intended to compete on all fronts with current mobile operators, and to this end, the company had begun extensive testing of its network in Nigeria.
Al-Shamsi said Etisaalat intended to offer extensive coverage and high quality service in the country when it rolled out its mobile service later in the year.
While a definitive date has not been fixed for this, feelers are that the company could start in June.
Al Shamsi said that as the fifth operator in Nigeria’s GSM mobile telephony market, the company already knew that only service at the best level could guarantee success in the competitive Nigerian market.
He added that based on the level of work, it had realised that much needed to be done, the company had already reviewed its business plan and would scale up its initial plans to invest $1bn in Nigeria.
According to him, the size of the Nigerian market has shown that $1bn will not be enough to effectively cover the scale and quality of jobs to be done.
On Wednesday, at a special tour organised for Nigerian journalists at the ITU conference, the company said that it had experienced a similar situation in Egypt, where it came in as the third operator to compete with others that had close to eight years of operations in the country ahead of it.
The company said at rollout in Egypt, it embarked on a massive network build out and was able to build 2,000 base stations within the first year.
This, it noted, helped achieve a subscriber base of five million within the same period.
Based on current plans by Etisalat, there are clear indications that it might rollout services in Nigeria in June with plans to surpass its achievement in Egypt.
Already, the Nigerian network is linked to the Egyptian network and this allows users to roam automatically.
Also, it has been able to achieve a coverage of over 90 per cent of Egypt within one year of its operations, while it also built both a second and third-generation networks in the country simultaneously.
The company said it had applied for 3G frequency in Nigeria and had received favourable response from government on the matter.
This implies that in the coming weeks, subscribers can expect one of the most massive network coverage ever achieved in Nigeria.
For a firm to achieve five million subscribers within one year of roll out is something that has not been achieved before even in large countries like Nigeria and South Africa.
Al-Shamsi said the firm wanted to meet this achievement and even surpass it.
Packages that the firm may offer include those targetted at users across all segments of the society. But with network quality as its biggest attraction, the equation in the local telecommunication sector could change soon.
The growth recorded in Nigeria’s telecommunications sector in the past eight years has attracted global interest.
For a country that has been enmeshed in unstable political and economic system for many years, the development represents a pleasant departure from the negative trends that the country had been associated with. It also opened the eyes of the world to the country’s potential.
However, the past seven years have presented mixed blessings for telecommunication service users.
While operators have offered solutions to many of the problems of users through the several innovations, the quality of service and associated costs have also led to many disappointments.
So, the decision of the Mubadala Development Company of the United Arab Emirates to invest $400m to secure a GSM licence in Nigerian 2007, had been viewed by many as one of the needed solutions to the limited competition in the country’s telecom sector.
The coming of Mubadala led to the entry of Etisalat, a leading mobile phone operator in the Middle East and Africa, into the country under a partnership agreement with Mubadala to implement the Digital Mobile Licence.
With the rollout delayed a bit longer than expected, the firm has, however, now stated that it is on the verge of a network rollout by Etisalat, the operator of the licence in Nigeria.
A glimpse into the services that it will offer emerged during a visit to the firm’s office complex at the Smart Village, Egypt’s digital technology centre it the recently concluded International Telecommunications Union Telecom Africa Summit in Cairo.
In an interview at the event, the Chief Executive Officer, Etisalat Nigeria, Mr. Saoud Al Shamsi, said the company intended to compete on all fronts with current mobile operators, and to this end, the company had begun extensive testing of its network in Nigeria.
Al-Shamsi said Etisaalat intended to offer extensive coverage and high quality service in the country when it rolled out its mobile service later in the year.
While a definitive date has not been fixed for this, feelers are that the company could start in June.
Al Shamsi said that as the fifth operator in Nigeria’s GSM mobile telephony market, the company already knew that only service at the best level could guarantee success in the competitive Nigerian market.
He added that based on the level of work, it had realised that much needed to be done, the company had already reviewed its business plan and would scale up its initial plans to invest $1bn in Nigeria.
According to him, the size of the Nigerian market has shown that $1bn will not be enough to effectively cover the scale and quality of jobs to be done.
On Wednesday, at a special tour organised for Nigerian journalists at the ITU conference, the company said that it had experienced a similar situation in Egypt, where it came in as the third operator to compete with others that had close to eight years of operations in the country ahead of it.
The company said at rollout in Egypt, it embarked on a massive network build out and was able to build 2,000 base stations within the first year.
This, it noted, helped achieve a subscriber base of five million within the same period.
Based on current plans by Etisalat, there are clear indications that it might rollout services in Nigeria in June with plans to surpass its achievement in Egypt.
Already, the Nigerian network is linked to the Egyptian network and this allows users to roam automatically.
Also, it has been able to achieve a coverage of over 90 per cent of Egypt within one year of its operations, while it also built both a second and third-generation networks in the country simultaneously.
The company said it had applied for 3G frequency in Nigeria and had received favourable response from government on the matter.
This implies that in the coming weeks, subscribers can expect one of the most massive network coverage ever achieved in Nigeria.
For a firm to achieve five million subscribers within one year of roll out is something that has not been achieved before even in large countries like Nigeria and South Africa.
Al-Shamsi said the firm wanted to meet this achievement and even surpass it.
Packages that the firm may offer include those targetted at users across all segments of the society. But with network quality as its biggest attraction, the equation in the local telecommunication sector could change soon.
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