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Jonah Iboma IN its quest to take Internet and video conferencing facilities to the grassroots, Emperion West Africa has completed a one-day seminar on its franchise programme in Lagos. The franchise programme is a nationwide scheme designed at providing ordinary folks affordable Internet, which allows individual, small and medium businesses the opportunity to offer services through the franchise programme. The scheme is also designed to provide also a national stock and service support to achieve the objectives. According to the firm the seminar, gave officials of Emperion the opportunity to explain the franchise programme to its existing and potential dealers. The Managing Director, Mr. Sandeep Jayaswal, who led the Emperion team, said the scheme was designed to transform internet access in the country “Services will be standardised,” Jayaswal told his audience that came from far and near. “The programme will revive cyber café businesses, use of online payment, offer financial help a...

Etisalat has today announced the introduction of Homezone, yet another dimension of choice in the suite of choices it is offering potential subscribers to the Etisalat network in its ongoing 0809uchoose campaign. Homezone is an innovative feature from Etisalat that will empower customers with the power to choose and register any area of their choice nationwide in the launch cities, and in other cities subsequently, as their Homezone. On this highly unique plan, calls within the registered Homezone attract discounted costs compared to calls made in other areas. This means that customers can register any area they spend most of their time as their Homezone and thus enjoy discounted call rates every time they make calls from this zone. Speaking about the new initiative, Etisalat Nigeria’s Vice President Marketing, Wael Ammar, stated that with Homezone, Etisalat is further demonstrating to Nigerians that it is entering the Nigerian market with the sole intention of ensuring that Nigerian ...

Jonah Iboma Grahamstown, South Africa Leading African mobile telecommunications operators have signed a $400m pact to build an undersea fibre optic cable infrastructure that would complement the current but insufficient SAT3 in operation. The new cable will run from the West Africa coast through the rest of Africa.Leading operators in the pact which include Vodacom, Telkom, MTN, Broadband Infraco and Neotel said on Sunday that they signed a deal worth more than $400 million (about R3.12 billion) to build a 5.1Tb cable to land in as many African countries on the West Coast as possible. The new venture is expected to increase the already emerging competition in the undersea cable business. Due to dissatisfaction with SAT-3, the only undersea cable serving most of the countries in West coast of Africa, a number of new ventures had started to provide alternative services. Among these ventures are Infinity Cable promoted by Infinity Worldwide Group based in Granada; MainOne Cable promoted b...

Jonah Iboma The fastest growing telecommunications company in the world, Etisalat, has today 08.09, announced that it has entered the final leg of its journey towards the commencement of commercial operations in Nigeria. Etisalat, Nigeria's fifth GSM operator had paid 400 million USD to obtain the Unified Access Service License.Etisalat had made the first official call on its network on 13 March 2008 and progressively set in motion the process of rolling out a robust and stable network that will traverse Nigeria, starting with several cities. Making the announcement today in Lagos, the Chairman of Etisalat Nigeria, Mr. Hakeem Bello-Osagie said 'Today, 08.09, I am happy to announce that Etisalat Nigeria is indeed on track in its quest to build and deliver a truly robust and stable network, one in keeping with Etisalat's reputation as a world class telecommunications service provider.' Mr. Bello-Osagie further stated that 'it has been crucial for Etisalat Nigeria to...

Jonah Iboma In the light of the current epileptic services and high price regime by Telecom Operators in the country, experts have advocated the use of internet telephony as the only succour available for now. One of their strong points is that Internet telephony forms more than 75 per cent of calls in developed countries while Nigerians still depend largely on GSM and landlines for both local and international calls. A Nigerian communication expert based in the United States of America, Dom Francis, lamented the cost and quality of services Nigerians are made to endure in the name of telephone services. He noted that the unfortunate thing was that the cost of calls was not commensurate with the services received by subscribers. He advised Nigerians to wake up to the realities of evolving technology stressing that Nigerians seem to have been left far too behind. "Out there internet calls is the main thing and it doesn't cost more than N5 per minute whether local or internati...

Jonah Iboma Grahamstown, South Africa MTN Group on Sunday admitted quality challenges in a number of countries where it operates stating however that it was set to address the problems.Already in a number of countries the telecoms firm has spent huge sums of money on quality improvement.The Executive Director, Corporate Affairs, MTN Group, Ms. Nozipho January-Bardill Who disclosed this at the ongoing 12th Highway Africa conference at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, stated that strong growth was expected across the regions and that additional investments infrastructure would be required to meet demand and improve network quality.She said this decision reflected the determination of the Group to be the leading provider of telecommunications services across the globe and especially in emerging markets.Speaking further, she said the group has always been a leader in the provision of quality telecom services to its subscribers and therefore would not relent in this direction....

Jonah Iboma There were indications on Friday that Globacom is in talks about forming a partnership with South African mobile phone operator, Vodacom. According to reports by Reuters, an unnamed spokesman for Globacom said both Telkom South Africa, which owns 50 per cent of Vodacom, and the Nigerian company were partnership talks. The spokesman said, “There is a discussion going on between Vodacom and Globacom ... The discussion is about building a business partnership between the two organisations.” It added that a spokeswoman for Vodacom, however, said that she was unaware of any such talks. A South African newspaper had earlier reported that the Chairman of Globacom, Dr. Mike Adenuga, had proposed merging Telkom’s 50 percent stake in Vodacom with Globacom to create a pan-African telecom firm “Vodaglo” worth $18 billion Vodacom provides GSM service to more than 23 million customers in South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho and Mozambique. Industry experts in...