Airtel Nigeria is going full steam toward developing Nigeria’s 3G networks. According to a report by Business Day, the company’s CEO Rajan Swaroop said that they are looking to erect a 3G network expanding to cover nearly 80 percent of Nigeria’s population by 2012.
According to the report, which included an interview with Swaroop, the move aims to bring “reliable and affordable Internet services to its customers.”
It comes as mobile operators continue to battle one another over pricing and reach in the country.
In the interview, Swaroop said that his company was hoping that their infrastructure efforts would boost revenue for its Internet data services as well as provide much needed improvements to the country’s lacking telecom sector.
“We are building a 3G infrastructure and by the time we are finished, we will have covered 70 to 80 percent of the population and that’s maybe one-year away,” he said.
He said that Airtel currently has some 150,000 subscribers, “but we strongly believe that the overall potential for this is something like 2 million subscribers out of an overall total of 16 million.”
The announcement also comes as Airtel reported a decline in overall revenue over the past 12 months.
By Staff
