MTN Nigeria plans to spend $3 billion on its 2013 to 2015 business plan, after it invested $1.5 billion (R14.9 billion) on capital items during the last year.
Nigeria is the operator's largest country, with 51.3 million subscribers out of its total base of 195 million, as at the end of March, which is when it last released country-specific figures.
Funmilayo Omogbenigun, MTN Nigeria's GM of corporate affairs, says the operator's recent $3 billion (R29.8 billion) loan facility will go towards its 2013 to 2015 business plan. The loan is a $1.8 billion additional facility to the $1.2 billion restructured existing local facility.
Omogbenigun did not provide investment details, but Bloomberg has reported that the loan, from a group of 17 local banks and seven foreign lenders, will go into upgrading infrastructure, with more than $1.5 billion to be spent this year.
Speeding up
MTN Nigeria is the country's largest cellphone operator, with about 47.8% of the market. However, it has previously come under fire from the local authority for not meeting quality-of-service standards.
Omogbenigun says the regulator has lifted the ban on MTN running promotions and the last monitoring exercise showed that it has met acceptable levels of service quality.
The operator secured one of four licences to operate digital GSM services in February 2001 and launched full operations in the same year. By February 2003, it recorded a million active subscribers, the first operator in Nigeria to hit that milestone.
Omogbenigun says that, although long-term evolution (LTE) is currently not available in Nigeria, its network is built to be scalable so that it can accommodate LTE when it becomes available.
Group president and CEO Sifiso Dabengwa said MTN Nigeria recorded strong growth in reported revenue year-on-year for the first four months of 2013.
Rand reported revenues, up 15% year-on-year, were driven by a weaker rand against the US dollar, while local currency revenues were down marginally in the same period, says Dabengwa.
"The main focus for the Nigerian operation is to improve network quality and capacity to enhance competitiveness and cater for higher usage. We have made good progress on our capital expenditure rollout programme."
Dabengwa added that the unit continues talks with the Nigerian Communications Commission, regarding its recent determination that MTN Nigeria is a dominant operator in that country.
By the end of March, MTN Nigeria had added 450 new 2G sites, compared with 211 in the first quarter of the same period last year. It also added 259 co-located 3G sites, bringing the total number of 3G sites to 3 508.
Last November, black-owned investment group Shanduka bought a $335 million (about R3 billion) minority stake in MTN Nigeria, to grow its African presence.
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