Bharti Airtel plans $300-mn expansion in Nigeria

Bharti Airtel plans to spend $300 million on network expansion in Nigeria as it looks to boost its subscriber base in the country.

Segun Ogunsanya, head of the Airtel Nigeria unit, told IT News Africa the company planned to spend about $300 million expanding Airtel's network and services in the country this year. He added, the company had invested so much in marketing research to see what the customers wanted and how the company was delivering on those expectations.

According to Bloomberg, Airtel was targeting a subscriber base of 30 million by the end of the year in Africa's biggest economy.

Ogunsanya said he was very optimistic that there would be no hurdles to achieving the growth and was sure the company was going to reach the 30-million mark. He added, despite the environment and the issues the company faced it was still giving relatively good service to customers.

New Delhi-based Airtel had a 25.5-million subscriber base at the end of March, according to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

Airtel unseated Nigeria's Globacom Ltd as the second-largest operator in the country during the three months through March, behind Johannesburg-based MTN Group Ltd.

All three companies had been fined by the NCC for failing to meet quality service standards in January and were banned from new SIM card sales during March.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country with about 170 million people, is Airtel's largest market outside India. Nigeria is a target for mobile-phone companies even as power outages and frequent bomb attacks presented challenges to doing business.

According to NCC data, the total number of connected lines increased to 177 million as of the end of April, as against 170 million at the start of the year.