Monday, June 8, 2009

Nigeria's Visafone Plans Major Expansion of its Wireless Network

Nigerian newspaper The Guardian reports that Visafone Communications,
Nigeria's fourth largest mobile operator by subscribers, will spend
between USD300 million and USD400 million over the next two years on
expanding its wireless network. According to the report, Visafone
plans to plough the majority of the funds into deploying a 3,000km
nationwide backbone covering all of Nigeria's 36 states.

Construction of the network will begin in the south-east, and then
move towards the south of the country, before being extended to the
city of Lagos in the south-west. Deployment of the cable will then
head north via the capital Abuja.

In a separate story, Visafone has recently upgraded its network to
bring its core switch capacity to six million subscribers, aimed at
improving service quality. The upgrade will also ensure that the
cellco can continue its rapid expansion of network coverage and
customer acquisition without fear of congestion on the network. At
present, Visafone covers 170 towns and cities in 22 states, though the
company's CEO Ninan Thomas revealed plans to provide coverage to all
36 states by 2011.

No comments: