Burundi’s biggest mobile phone operator U-com plans to double its subscribers in the tiny central African country to 555,000 by 2010, the company said on Thursday.
The company which is owned by Egyptian telecoms operator Orascom has 250,000 users, up from 159,000 in 2007.
Orascom bought U-Com from Global Vision Limited of India in July this year, but will officially take over the running of the firm in January 2009, an official at U-Com commented.
“With new equipment U-com would be able to supply 300,000 more people in the next two years,” the company said in a report.
The company said it had reduced the cost of some cellphones from $55 to $30, to attract people with low incomes.
The firm began operating in 2000 with its GSM service. It is now providing internet services to offices and homes, mainly in the capital Bujumbura.
Burundi’s mobile telephone sector grew 65 per cent in 2007 due partly to improved security conditions in the coffee growing nation.
Investment in the sector rose to $71 million in 2007, from $43 million in 2006, according to telecom regulator (ARCT).
The country of 8 million people is emerging from more then a decade of ethnic war that killed 300,000 people. President Pierre Nkurunziza, was elected in 2005 as part of a UN- backed African brokered peace agreement.
Burundi has four mobile operators, U-com, state-owned ONAMOB, Africell, which is a shareholding of VTL Holdings of Dubai; and Econet, a subsidiary of Econet Wireless from South Africa.
This year, Burundi issued new licences to two more firms, HITS Telecom, which is a joint venture between Ugandan and United Arab Emirates businessmen and Lacell SU from Nepal.
