Etisalat renews agreement with Alcatel-Lucent to improve service quality

Mr Steve Evans

One of Nigeria’s GSM service providers Etisalat, a part of the UAE Investment Consortium, has renewed a fresh agreement to provide high quality service network for its subscribers, with a view to courting more in the year 2013.

Etisalat has been on the drive to becoming a major Telecommunications Company in a Country that has The First Three MTN, Airtel and Globacom as the pace setters, having the chunk of the 100 million subscribers in the Nation.

The Ceremony which took place at Etisalat’s Banana Island Head Office in Lagos, became the sixth phase of agreement signed in recent times, between the two companies since the Dubai based firm came into the GSM market in 2008.

Speaking on the development, Chief Executive Officer of Etisalat Nigeria, Mr Steve Evans described the deal as a strategic step to sustain the company’s drive to step up its game in taking GSM service to the next level of unique network service .

Alcatel has been instrumental to the establishment of Public Mobile Cellular service for Etisalat’s Region 2 services that comprises Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Kwara, Ondo, Ekiti, Edo, Delta and Kogi states.

Speaking further on the agreement, Mr Evans said “This is a significant milestone as we move into the next phase of our network roll-out. We plan to increase our cell sites by an additional 1,000 in 2013 and this agreement is towards achieving that target. We are happy to be partnering with Alcatel-Lucent, in fulfillment of our promise to continuously deliver quality and innovative services to our customers.”

In his reaction to the agreement, the President of Alcatel-Lucent Middle East and Africa, Turkey and Arzebaijan , Mr Amr El-Leithy, said “This new agreement further strengthens our long-standing relationship with Etisalat covering numerous projects, and demonstrates their confidence in our ability to build, deliver and deploy end-to-end complex networks with strong local expertise and support capabilities. We are committed to supporting Etisalat’s growth in Nigeria and ensure world class services for its customers, and we look forward to continuing our successful working relationship into the future”.