Motorola has won a $75 million (R532 million) GSM network expansion contract with Nigerian cellular operator M-tel, enabling the Nigerian operator to extend its coverage across the country.
Stefano Mattiello, Motorola's regional sales director for sub-Saharan Africa, says it is difficult to translate the investment into a prediction of how many new subscribers M-tel will attract.
"But, obviously, they [M-tel] have aggressive growth plans - and are probably aiming for about three million subscribers." M-tel currently has between 1.2 million and 1.5 million subscribers, he adds.
Mattiello adds that six companies tendered for the M-tel contract, describing the other five as "the usual suspects".
Subscriber growth
Raphael Udeogu, Motorola Nigeria country manager, notes in a statement there are more than 20 million Nigerian mobile customers, with many regions still without coverage.
M-tel is one of four mobile operators in Nigeria. The other operators are MTN Nigeria, Globacom (commonly known as Glomobile), and Vee Networks of Nigeria (Vmobile) - formerly Econet Wireless Nigeria, and bought this year by Celtel.
M-tel CEO John Weir adds: "M-tel is currently regrouping its business to prepare for greater growth and penetration in the Nigerian market. We want to increase the availability of our network and to expand our network coverage as quickly as possible to support greater subscriber growth.
"Motorola implemented M-tel's original radio network in 2003 and because of the quality of their equipment and their credibility in maintaining that original radio network, we've been very happy to turn to them again to expand our network further," explains Weir.
Vodafone contract
The announcement of the M-tel contract comes a few days after Motorola won a deal to upgrade, extend and manage Vodafone's nationwide GSM network in Turkey.
The eight-year network modernisation project involves Motorola ensuring 3G readiness in certain key sites.
Unlike the M-tel contract, which is primarily aimed at increasing "voice subscribers", the expected benefits of the Vodafone contract are an improvement of network quality and performance, a reduction of Vodafone's network operating costs, and greater predictability of related expenses.
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