MTN Group has awarded a contract to Ericsson to manage its networks in Nigeria for five years.
The agreement is for MTN networks
in Lagos, Abuja, Enugu and Port Harcourt in the most populous African
country where MTN is the largest operator with 45 million subscribers.
MTN would now be able to focus
more on customer experience, while Ericsson would become
Johannesburg-based MTN’s largest managed services partner in Africa, the
Stockholm-based Ericsson said yesterday.
MTN and rivals have clashed
previously with the Nigerian Communications Commission over poor quality
of service on cellular networks. In 2012, MTN and Etisalat were each
fined 360 million naira (about R24m at yesterday’s exchange rate).
On November 19 last year, MTN
signed a contract with Ericsson and Chinese networking and telecoms
equipment firm Huawei to maintain its Nigerian network. Ericsson said
last year it planned to expand its network management services in Africa
as more phone firms outsourced the technical side of their businesses,
Bloomberg reported yesterday.
The Swedish company was pushing
the expansion of fourth generation (4G) high-speed performance networks
on the continent although it believed that the bulk of new subscriptions
by 2019 would remain for services on 3G networks. Ericsson was
prioritising the roll-out of mobile television in addition to operations
and business support systems, Fredrik Jejdling, Ericsson’s head for
sub-Saharan Africa, said this week.
Ericsson’s
core business is building and running networks. It said 40 percent of
the traffic on the continent was channelled through its equipment.
About 15 percent of sub-Saharan
Africa’s population is covered by broadband networks. Ericsson has
projected this to grow to 65 percent by 2019 as operators diversify
their income away from voice to data revenue. MTN shares rose 2.75
percent to close at R200.69 yesterday. – Bloomberg, Reuters and Asha
Speckman
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