MTN Nigeria has rolled out a record set of 10,000 base
stations across the country, DigitalSENSE
Business News reports.
Confirming this to DigitalSENSE Business News, the Chief
Executive Officer, MTN Nigeria, Mr. Michael Ikpoki, revealed that MTN is reinforcing
its position as the largest telecom network in Africa with the kind of
investment in base stations deployment.
The additional base stations, he said, would contribute to
significant improvements to quality of service, just as they are a major
component of the company’s infrastructure anticipated to directly impact on
network capacity and the experience of customers.
The company, he said, is focusing on three major areas, one
of them being significant improvement of customer experience, stressing that
MTN would be building on a track record of aggressive investment in the network
to ramp up capacity and ultimately improve service quality.
According to him, MTN has led the industry in terms of rapid
network rollout, adding that the company’s aggressive drive to significantly
improve customer experience on the network in the last few months has led to
record deployment of base stations across the country.
“In the last few months, we have ramped up our rollout. Last
month we had a record rollout figure and we are currently rolling out up to 300
sites a month to make sure that we have enough capacity. We are getting more
head-room, more dormant capacity in the network. That way, we can carry more
traffic and give our customers a decent quality of service on a consistent
basis. Indeed, there has been noticeable improvement and this will continue,”
Ikpoki said.
The first indigenous CEO of MTN Nigeria, apart from crossing
the 10,000 base station deployment mark, noted that the company has also
installed additional switching centres, aside from its world-class network
management centre and approximately 20,000 kilometres of fibre-optic cable cross
country and around metropolitan hubs.
“If you look at our investment portfolio from inception till
now, MTN has invested more than a trillion naira. From whichever angle you look
at it, by normal indices in terms of investment ratio, in most emerging markets,
any ratio above 15-17 percent of revenue is a decent ratio in terms of
investment. We are doing far in excess of that at MTN Nigeria. This year, we
are going to be doing about 42 percent of revenue as capital investment. Last
year we did 34 percent of revenue as capital investment,” he said.
Ikpoki emphasised the unrelenting investment spirit in
Nigeria by MTN, said service quality has actually improved, but there is still
room for improvement, pointing out that operational challenges relating to the
environment sometimes robbed the network of the gains it has made in capacity
expansion.
“Challenges with quality of service are related to
operational issues and I know a lot has been said about these challenges.
However, we acknowledge that we have a responsibility to ensure we deliver a
good customer experience. That is something we take very seriously. That said,
there are quite a number of operational issues which we cannot wish away. Sixty
to seventy percent of the challenges we have are mainly power-related,” he
said.
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