Celtel Intensifies Network Expansion Scheme
 19th MAR 2007

Celtel Nigeria has intensified its plans of ensuring total coverage of Nigeria with the rollout of an average of 100 base stations monthly across the six geo-political zones. The firm is also speeding up the completion of it North-South microwave transmission backbone in pursuit of its 2007 goals of providing significant coverage for large portions of Nigeria’s 140 people.
In details made available to our correspondent on Saturday, Celtel’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Bayo Ligali, said that the overall objective of the current expansion was to cover 95 per cent of the total population of the country by mid-2008.
The Celtel CEO explained that the investment by the MTC/Celtel Group in Celtel Nigeria had started yielding fruits with the completion of numerous equipment supply contracts and roll-out agreements.
He pointed to the $50m contract that Celtel Nigeria signed with Motorola to expand its GSM network within the South-East and South- South regions of the country.
Under the turnkey agreement, Motorola will deploy its latest Motorola Reach GSM solutions and provide comprehensive services.
The expansion will enable Celtel to increase its subscriber capacity, extend its coverage into new areas and improve the quality of its network.
Since the transformation of the company from Vmobile to Celtel, the company had grown its network infrastructure significantly, with the number of base stations and switches increasing by 200 per cent and 100 per cent respectively.
These developments have impacted the coverage capacity and quality of service of the network.
But Ligali stated that 2007 was the year of consolidation for the company having overcome its funding challenges following the MTC/Celtel investment.
“Our single-minded objective”, he declared “is to move rapidly up to the top position of the GSM industry in Nigeria, and sustain our leadership position in customer service delivery”.
In terms of funding, he made reference to the recent signing and financial closure of $1.62bn syndicated term loan facilities, which will be used to refinance the company’s existing debt and network rollout programme.
The facilities consist of N125bn local currency facility arranged by Celtel Nigeria and a $450m foreign currency facility arranged and fully underwritten by Citibank, N.A. while Huawei Technologies and UBA New York provided $148.6m and $40m respectively.
Ligali referred to the financial vision of the company fuelled by the financial capacity of the parent company, MTC/Celtel Group, which has committed about $2.5bn in investment in Nigeria.
MTC boss, Dr. Sa’ad Al-Barrak had committed to the massive foreign direct investment, while visiting President Olusegun Obasanjo, early in February, and at a press conference declared that the Nigerian market was too important not to be treated specially.
The gains of the MTC/Celtel investment are beginning to manifest in infrastructure deployment, capacity enhancement, coverage expansion and enhanced service delivery
Meanwhile, details of coverage expansion on regional basis show that Lagos is now significantly optimised with over 20 new towns added to the Celtel coverage map in the past four months.
While the South-South region, covering Edo, Delta, Rivers, Bayelsa and Akwa-Ibom states had witnessed service extension to 30 new towns, the South-East region has 28 new towns added to the Celtel coverage map. For these two regions, the recent agreement between Celtel and Motorola will boost rapid coverage expansion.

In the regions, North-Central, North-West and North-East regions, the network has experienced aggressive roll-out activities with over 70 new towns within coverage, while the South-West covering Oyo, Ondo, Osun, Ekiti and Kwara states have also added 65 towns.

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