‘Smile’s volte service will enhance voice calls in Nigeria’- Buitelaar

The Chief Executive Officer of Smile Communications Limited, Michiel  Buitelaar, has said that the introduction of Voice over Long Term  Evolution (VoLTE) on its 4G LTE network, will not only give Nigerians  the best of speed in voice and data connectivity, but will also offer  voice clarity and call reliability.

Buitelaar who spoke in  Lagos recently, said Smile Communications is keen at making another  impressive mark with voice as a new complement to the entire package,  which it has for the rapidly growing Nigerian market.

“We are a  bit more advanced in our operations than a good number of our  competitors in all the market segments. The market is moving much faster in the broadband direction and we want Nigerians to embrace the  broadband as the place to be. There are a lot of quality issues in the  Nigerian market and there are a lot of opportunities for those that  provide real quality, like breaking one’s call and getting immediate  value from the network. The quality of our voice will definitely beat  the existing benchmark in the Nigerian market,” he said.

According to him, the major focus of Smile is to continue to function as a  broadband provider of choice that can take people away from low speed  and low quality service in a new world that craves for speed. He said  the issue of quality must be upper-most in the company’s strategic plans because of the fact that there are lots of small trading outfits in  Nigeria that desire very fast ways of getting to their clients before  others. He explained that the provision of huge digital speed could  offer his company the leeway and the added leverage to reach their
destination where people can enjoy data speed and talk with voice  clarity and confidence.

Buitelaar who is optimistic that the  Smile voice outreach will make another market impression that could  vindicate the quality of the entire service provisions that emerge from  the platform as a big basket of offerings, said the company would strive to create the Information Technology (IT) industry as a motor for  digital economy, where all the other facets of Nigeria’s economy will  use to make their marks in business development and services. He said  because Nigeria has a lot of people with IT knowledge, those providing  services for the industry must be completely equal to the task, both in  terms of skills and right frame of mind. He believes that a lot of  developers of e-commerce are still emerging and other companies are  embracing that with high-speed connectivity service offerings.

Explaining how the Nigeria economy could leverage IT development, Buitelaar said the best way is to create a significant IT industry to serve the growing  population of technology savvy Nigerians. “Nigeria has good number of  university graduates with lots of IT skills. You need to have a decent  infrastructure, as well as common and reliable access to Internet  connectivity. Nigeria needs human skill, infrastructure. The economy  requires people that can move into e-business,” Buitelaar said.

Speaking on the strategy to achieve a true VoLTE service on the Smile 4G LTE  network, Buitelaar said: “Our market strategy is to be the voice provider of  choice. We sell broadband data, and it is something we intend to own and we plan to capture the market in such a way that we take people away  from what they are used to, which is a narrowband piece that comes with
low quality, to a supper fast 4G LTE broadband platform. I think  everything we do, whether data or voice, is built upon that and is a key selling point for us in the broadband market space.”