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NTEL to roll out first phase of services in 3 states, November

Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

NTEL, the new telecommunications company from the recently liquidated Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) and its mobile arm, MTel, now under  the consortium NatCom Development and Investment Limited, has formally announced its telecoms service roll-out plans.

Making the announcement and unveiling its strategies, NTEL said it would roll out in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt, Rivers State, this month, as a first phase before extending the services to other states, towns and villages across the country.

The plan to roll out its nationwide telecom services is hinged on the resuscitation of NITEL’s most valuable asset, the SAT-3 submarine cable, which the new NTEL said,  it would ride on to provide its world-class 4G network service.

In spite of the liabilities that came with the assets of the old NITEL/MTel, its new owners, NTEL, has promised Nigerians of enhanced telecoms experience through the provision of better service quality in the areas of broadband data, voice telephony and the fixed line services, which are its core areas of business that will be riding on its supper fast speed 4G network.

Announcing its big return at a press conference in Lagos last week, NTEL’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Kamar Abass, told Nigerians to expect a bigger and better change in the telecoms landscape. He promised Nigerians that the new NTEL would offer high speed connectivity broadband data service, superlative voice service and excellent metro bandwidth fixed line service, which other operators have neglected.”The first phase network will begin by deploying up to 800 sites, and later increase to 2,000 sites,” Abass said, while promising that NTEL will achieve all of these, having revived the old NITEL SAT-3 that carries broadband capacities from Europe to Lagos, connecting South Africa and far East African countries. He said the new NTEL telecoms service offering would be built on SAT-3.

“With SAT-3, NTEL will provide international bandwidth/IP connectivity to carriers and major corporate between Nigeria and international destinations. We are starting with 800 sites in our first phase network rollout, with plans to increase the number of sites to 2,000 in the near future,” Abass said, adding, “We want to collaborate with third parties to do something in the rural communities, that will help to drive down the high cost of bandwidth, in such a way that our customers will find our pricing appealing.  What we are determined to do is to fill the capacity that we have and we need to fill it in a really short time frame. We will work with customers who have genuine interest and try and give them deals that will encourage them to remain with NTEL.”

SAT-3 submarine cable stands for South Atlantic Telecommunications Cable number 3. The cable system began operations in 2002 with 17 landing points in 15 countries.  It is Africa’s longest submarine cable covering a distance of 28,800km. SAT-3 has a total capacity of about 1,000 Gbps. The cable system is funded and owned by a consortium of 35 foremost telecoms operators from different parts of the world, Nigeria inclusive, and NatCom is the fourth highest shareholder with a share of 6.23 per cent.

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