MTN
Nigeria is set to roll out its Fourth Generation Long Term Evolution (4G LTE)
broadband services latest by July 2016 in selected cities, using the 800MHz
frequency acquired from Visafone Ltd earlier this year.
MTN
plans to have about 1,500 LTE collocated sites backhauled with fibre optics
this year.
LEADERSHIP
had last week exclusively reported that MTN Nigeria paid N47.5 billion to
acquire Visafone’s assets, including its frequency and 2.1 million customers in
order to improve the quality of MTN’s broadband services for its subscribers.
The
chief executive officer, MTN, Mr Fedinand Moolman, confirmed, during MTN Group
Ltd’s first quarter results analyst conference with investment firms recently
held in Johannesburg, South Africa, that the main reason MTN acquired Visafone
was to get access to the frequency which would allow it roll out LTE. He said
that MTN has started the process to migrate all the Visafone subscribers onto
its network so that they can clean up the frequency and start rolling out LTE.
“It
delayed our capital expenditure (CAPEX) rollout during the first quarter a
little bit because we needed to realign some of our CAPEX towards the LTE
rollout. We started the migration of the subscribers and we hope to conclude
that soon. The plans are to have commercial LTE available towards the end of
the second quarter, maybe early quarter three, albeit very limited, obviously
not substantial, and then start expanding this towards quarter three, quarter
four and first quarter of next year. It is obviously a comprehensive project,”
Moolman said.
The
chief financial officer, MTN Group, Bret Goschen, said, “We have been engaging
with our major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and vendors and ensuring
that the CAPEX rollout continues as planned. We are very close to finalising
short-term arrangements, bridge-type facilities with the vendors, and then
longer term arrangements around the ECA-backed credit financing we should have
in place by the mid year.”
The chief
operating officer, MTN Group, Jyoti Desai, said that they have taken a very
detailed analysis of MTN Nigeria’s data usage and where they should be rolling
out the LTE network in the first place.
“We
looked at the handset ecosystem and revenue opportunity and have identified
some of the major cities,” he said.
According
to him, MTN Nigeria’s LTE rollout will not impact its CAPEX as it already has
space reservation in its joint tower company. He also stated that the LTE will
be rolled out in existing base station sites.
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