Etisalat customer base reaches 19.5m amid network expansion push

Etisalat Nigeria, United Arab Emirates (UAE) operator, says the active subscriber base on its network is now 19.5 million, which translates into a 15 percent marketshare. Matthew Wilsher, chief executive officer, Etisalat Nigeria, disclosed this at a press briefing in Lagos, weekend.

According to the Etisalat boss, the telecommunications company is expanding its network capacity to meet the communication needs of its teeming subscribers. “We want to occupy two spaces in the industry. We want to be the best in terms of network quality and also provide our customers with a superior mobile broadband experience.” Continued investment in 2014 is in excess of $300 million, according to Wilsher, further adding that the investment is assisting the company achieve its goals of providing better service quality to subscribers. “On our existing network both 2G and 3G plus, the scope of our investments cover 2, 100 Base Transceiver Stations (BTS)”, he added.  

With an estimated N478 billion been ploughed into the expansion of Nigeria’s international fibre-optic capacity, which has in turn eased the long-standing constraints of high-speed Internet connectivity, Wilsher said the company is building metro-fibre networks in some states of the federation to boost the quality of broadband internet services.

 “We want customers to access online content without buffering. We want to offer customers supreme user experience” In 2009, the entire bandwidth capacity for international connections was 200 megabytes. Today, we have capacity in excess of 10 gigabytes per second. 

“That’s a phenomenal amount of investment in long distance submarine cable. This capacity is however important because the bulk of the country’s internet content is hosted outside the shores of Nigeria”, he added. Speaking in the same vein, Temi Ogunbambi, director, engineering, Etisalat Nigeria, said the firm is expected to deploy 5, 000 sites by the end of the year, adding that the figure “is a mixture of what we own directly and through collocation.  We have 7, 000 BTS (2G & 3G) and the number of telecoms sites is under 4, 500”, he stated. He said the telecoms company will make additional investments in 2G because large numbers of its subscriber base are still on this technology. 

“Most of our customers still do not have 3G enabled devices. They use 2G devices.” According to him, spectrum scarcity is sustaining telcos’ investment in 2G technology. Considering the power accounts for 60 percent of telcos’ operating cost, the Etisalat director said that the firm is building resilience into the network to cope with power related problems.

 “Power continues to be a big problem for all the operators. We’ve had trials with solar technology”. As part of the tower sale and lease back agreement with IHS, Ogunbambi said the tower company is committed to investing in alternative energy to improve uptime. 

“The biggest issue we would face is vandalism. A lot of investment has been made in protecting our telecoms sites”. The Etisalat director urged local communities to get involved in the protection of telecoms infrastructure and equipment. Commenting on the benefits of digital migration from a broadband perspective, Ogunbambi said it was important for the country to meet the June 2015 deadline in order to remain technologically competitive. “If we do not migrate, Nigeria will become a dumping ground for analogue television.” Digital migration will free up more spectrum for mobile operators to roll out efficient broadband services, he said. 

According to him, telecoms operators already believe that existing wireless technologies will not be the definitive solution to Nigeria’s internet access problem, adding that Long Term Evolution (LTE) will provide operators’ capacity to provide new offerings beyond mundane voice and data services. “4G technology is critical to deepening broadband penetration in the country.