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Airtel now second largest telecoms operator in Nigeria

By BusinessNews Staff on April 3, 2014

Bharti Airtel, the leading global telecommunications services provider with operations in 20 countries across Africa and Asia, has further consolidated its market position in Nigeria, demonstrating return on investment for the company in Africa’s largest operation.

Fresh statistics from Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the market regulator, show a continued growth trajectory placing Airtel as the second largest telecommunications services provider in terms of customers. This means that Airtel has now leapfrogged Glo to second largest network by customer numbers.

According to the report published on the website of the NCC, (www.ncc.gov.ng) Nigeria, as at February 2014 recorded total customer number of 26, 194, 336.00 while Glo, MTN and Etisalat finished at 24, 490, 650.00, 57, 183, 745.00 and 18,119,397.00, respectively.

Congratulating the team, Christian de Faria, Airtel Africa CEO, said: “This is a remarkable feat for Airtel, demonstrating that our investments, aimed at ensuring a superior experience for our customers in Nigeria, are bearing fruit. It is also a clear indication of the trust that a growing sector of the population have started to have in us.”

He added: “This achievement has not come easy and I must congratulate the Airtel team in Nigeria. Nigeria continues to be a very competitive telecoms market and our intention is to ensure that we continue to innovate and make life easier for our customers.”

The findings by NCC have corroborated independent research from Credit Suisse, a global financial-services group, which in July last year showed that Airtel’s market share has improved markedly in Nigeria growing by 21.3 percent, in the ten months leading to April 2013. Importantly, Credit Suisse noted that Airtel has the advantage of growing its market share using the existing, unutilized capacity on its network.”

Airtel Nigeria’s Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director, Segun Ogunsanya, said: “The recent report from the NCC is a glowing testimony to our collective commitment of delivering value to our customers and also becoming the most loved brand in the daily lives of Nigerians in line with our corporate vision. We are extremely pleased that Nigerians are expressing confidence in our network and we will continue to excite and delight them with innovative and affordable mobile telecommunications solution.

“For us at Airtel Nigeria, this is, indeed, the beginning of a new journey to reclaiming market leadership in the highly competitive telecoms landscape and we are totally committed to our quest of offering the best network experience as well as bespoke value offerings,” he said.

Since the launch in 2010, Airtel has invested over $1.7bn dollars to expand network capacity and deepen quality in Nigeria, in a bid to achieve world-class service quality. The company’s launch of its market-leading 3.75G service in March 2012 and the subsequent roll-out, has offered unparalleled, high-speed mobile Internet, across the 36 States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory in Abuja.

[Vanguard]

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