NIGERIA’s $32 billion telecommunications sector got a boost yesterday, with the entrance of the fifth telecoms players, NTEL.
NTEL disclosed that it would operate offer its services via the GSM technology with a plan to run 4G technologies across the country.
NATCOM Development and Investment Limited, which bought over NITEL through a guided liquidation process, and now trading as NTEL, made the announcement of its rollout in Lagos, explaining that it will launch in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt in November this year, as its first phase rollout, before extending its telecommunications services to other states, towns and villages across the country.
NATCOM began as a consortium of companies who came together to bid for the core assets of NITEL/MTEL through a guided liquidation process. Having acquired the telecom licenses to operate in Nigeria as a GSM operator, NTEL becomes the newest telecom operator in Nigeria.
Announcing its debut, its Chief Executive Officer, Kamal Abass, said in its first phase NTEL would launch international bandwidth services over SAT-3 and a 4G mobile network covering Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.
According to him, NTEL would be offering three portfolios of telecoms services in the areas of Business Mobile Network International, Voice Termination International Bandwidth Delivery and the Metro Bandwidth Fixed Services.
All these services would be launched on the NTEL 4G LTE Mobile service, which offer high-speed data, high-definition voice and video.
“The first phase network will begin by deploying up to 800 sites, and later increase to 2,000 sites,” Abass said.
He said NTEL had revived the old NITEL SAT 3 that carries broadband capacities from Europe to Lagos, connecting South Africa and Far East African countries, and would build the NTEL telecoms service on SAT3.
Speaking on the benefits of SAT 3, Abass said: “SAT-3 partnerships enable direct exchange of international traffic, known as IDD, with 35 partners.
Since July 2015, NTEL has delivered 10 million IDD minutes to Nigeria. With the SAT-3/WASC, NTEL provides connectivity from Lagos to Sesimbra, Portugal and Lagos towards Capetown and countries in between. NTEL also provides international bandwidth/IP connectivity to carriers and major corporates between Nigeria and international destinations. With over 1,100km of ducts and over 4,000km of fibre route in almost all states in Nigeria, NTEL is enabled to offer fibre capacity services to all Nigerians.
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