Airtel to spend $300m on network expansion in growth push

Bharti Airtel Ltd., India’s largest mobile-phone operator, is planning to spend $300 million on expanding its network this year as it targets growth in its Nigerian customer, Bloomberg reports.

“We’re very bullish about Nigeria,” said Segun Ogunsanya, 48, the head of the Nigeria unit. “We plan to spend about $300 million expanding Airtel’s network and services in the country this year. We have invested so much in marketing research to see what the customers want and we are delivering on those expectations.”

Airtel, as the company is known, plans to increase subscribers in Africa’s biggest economy to 30 million by the end of the year.

New Delhi-based Airtel had 25.5 million subscribers at the end of March, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). Nigeria is the company’s biggest market outside India.

“I’m very optimistic that there are no encumbrances against growth so I’m sure we’re going to reach the 30-million mark,” said Ogunsanya. “Despite the environment and the issues we face, I think we’re still giving relatively good service to our customers.”

Airtel unseated Nigeria’s Globacom Ltd. as the second-largest operator in the country during the three months through March, behind Johannesburg-based MTN Group Ltd., according to the NCC. All three companies were fined by the regulator for not meeting quality service standards in January and banned from selling new SIM cards during March.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with about 170 million people, is a target for mobile-phone companies even as power outages and frequent bomb attacks present challenges to doing business.

The total number of connected lines increased to 177 million as of the end of April, compared with 170 million at the start of the year, according to NCC data.