Nigerians To Enjoy Boost In Broadband Quality As Mtn Acquires Visafone
SAN FRANCISCO, January 07, (THEWILL) – Management of MTN Nigeria has confirmed the completion of the acquisition of Visafone, a leading CDMA firm in Nigeria, in a bid to improve the quality of broadband services for its subscribers.
According to Amina Oyagbola, Human Resource and Corporate Services Executive, MTN, the acquisition, which seeks to leverage resources for service enhancement, is also reflective of MTN's concerted efforts to deepen the growth and rollout of broadband services across Nigeria in support of the National Broadband Plan for the benefit of Nigerians.
“The acquisition of Visafone highlights MTN's commitment to Nigeria. More capacity will facilitate enhanced product/service offerings and experience in the data space to the delight of our valued customers. Voice is still King,” she said.
“However, data is becoming increasingly important in our everyday lives and our energies are focused on enhancing data and internet services to the benefit of our customers and the country at large.
“We are committed to exploring avenues for meeting our customers' increasing data needs in line with our vision to lead the delivery of a bold new digital world to our customers'.
“As we work to maximise our data capabilities towards achieving broadband of international quality, our objective is to ensure that Nigerians experience a boost in the quality of broadband internet services translating to the much needed enhanced data speeds and value to enhance personal and business productivity.”
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As of July 2014, Nigeria had a 16 percent internet user growth with 67,101,452 internet users, and most of these users access the online space mainly through their mobile devices. These statistics also drive the growth of mobile operator subscribers in the country, as Nigeria was ranked at number seven in the list of countries with the highest number of mobile phones.
According to the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), Nigeria had 148,427,043 mobile GSM subscribers and 2,042,015 mobile CDMA subscribers in the country, as of September 2015.
This acquisition is also expected to drive the broadband penetration in the country from under 10 percent to 30 percent by the national broadband plan targeted date of 2018.
A World Bank survey recently stated that empirical evidence pointed to a GDP growth of 2.5 percent for every 10 percent broadband penetration growths in Nigeria.