THE new owners of the moribund Nigerian Telecommunication Limited, NITEL, NATCOM Development and Investment Limited, will begin to offer voice and data services to Nigerians in March this year after investing about $1billion to resuscitate once blossoming national carrier.
Operating in the volatile telecoms sector with the brand name, ntel, the company said that it planned to employ 4,000 Nigerians before it rolls out its mobile lines, and 4G/LTE services for broadband users in the first quarter of the year.
The Chairman of NATCOM, Mr. Olatunde Ayeni, told the House of Representatives Joint Committees on Communication and Privatisation, that his company would begin a phased rollout from Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt before expanding to other parts of the country.
According to him, the initial financial bid was increased to $252.251 million from $221 million when juxtaposed with the liquidator's reserved price of $256 million.
"NATCOM's full submission was duly made to NITEL/MTEL's liquidator and Nigeria's Bureau of Public Enterprises on November 7, 2014. NATCOM's submission was accompanied by a bid bond in the amount of $10 million as stipulated in the liquidator's RFP," he said.
He disclosed that $10 million had been spent on SAT-3 system, quarterly dues to the consortium, system expansion and upgrade since the acquisition, adding that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) had assigned another set of microwave frequency ranges to NATCOM upon request for N176.8 million, computed on the basis of 800 bases station network in the first instance.
Ayeni said NATCOM was requested to pay an additional N6.6 billion to bridge the shortfall of the value of the Naira to the Dollar from N168 to N197, after the payment of the first instalment of 30 per cent of the bid price within 14 days of approval by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) and balance within the 90 days.
Group Managing Director, Teledom Group, Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem said that NATCOM Consortium has a chance of surviving in already crowded telecom market in the country, urging them to focus on providing landline which is presently none existence in the country.
“We should remember that NITEL has telephone exchanges in almost all the local government across the country, although, some of the cable and switches may be obsolete they real estate, towers, racks and power cable are still useful ,” he said .
He called on the consortium to look towards providing Nigerians fibre to home service that can give people access to broadband and cable television.
Also, President, National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers of Nigeria, NATCOMMS, Mr Deolu Ogunbanjo said that NATCOM needs to concentrate more on providing landline service that also goes with broadband service noting that it is coming at a time when the policy guideline required for broadband penetration has been established by government.
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