We’ve grown Etisalat to 14.5m subs in four years –Evans

Evans, Etisalat CEO

The chief executive officer, Etisalat Nigeria, Mr. Steven Evans, has said that they have thrived in growing the network in the last four years and has covered over 50 per cent of Nigerian population.

Mr. Evans who made this disclosure at a media session to commemorate the four years of Etisalat in Nigeria, said that by end of January 2012, Etisalat was recording 10.7 million subscribers, but 10 months later, the network has added over four million.

“10.7 million in January and 14.5 million as of October, that’s fantastic level of growth,” he declared.

 “As of today, we have covered something like 75 per cent of the population and you might find it surprising but something like 50 per cent of the population in Nigeria correctly or incorrectly is found in the rural. As you roll out your network, you cover the big cities first obviously then you begin to roll out to the second size of cities,” he said.

Emphasising that as a network rolls out, it gets harder to cover population obviously with single cell site, and progressively it gets more expensive and we are still rolling out to new coverage areas, to bring home the 75 per cent coverage area that we have got today.

In terms of reaching the company’s goal, he said, they are focused on one of the leading network operators in Nigeria clearly, we couldn’t put forward this thing as having any regional preference whatsoever.

“So, the network broadly speaking is divided into four sub-regions; the North, North-South, South East, South West then Lagos, which is a sort of home to many of the regions because of the concentration of density of population in Lagos and obviously the tendency of growth,” he explained.

So, it’s difficult for me to say where we are strong or weak. If I look at our customer numbers across the whole of our network, I would say there is more growth for us in the future, probably coming from the South-South and South-East as we continue to roll out there.

What Etisalat has find out in that region is a lot more distributed population with a lot of villages and towns, and a lot of movement between those towns.

“So the network is actually going to be bigger to give the coverage that you need in that area,” he said.

Remmy Nweke

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