London - Bharti Airtel’s Nigeria unit said a partnership
with China’s ZTE to provide 4G high-speed broadband will see it add subscribers
and narrow the gap with market leader MTN Group in Africa’s most populous
country.
The Indian company is seeking “to lead the industry in
terms of new customer acquisition CEO Segun Ogunsanya said in an interview in
Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. Airtel will start to move subscribers to the
4G service from 3G “in the next three to four months,” he said.
Airtel was Nigeria’s third-largest wireless operator with
34.7 million customers at the end of March, according to the most recent data
published by the Nigerian Communications Commission. That’s 43 percent below
Johannesburg-based MTN’s 60.4 million, although Airtel has recorded the highest
quarter-on-quarter growth in the last two periods. Local operator Globacom is
number 2 in the West African nation with 37.3 million subscribers.
Airtel has invested more than $1.5 billion in its
Nigerian network in the past five years, seeking to tap rising demand for mobile
and data services in a country with 180 million inhabitants. The government is
seeking to increase broadband penetration to 30 percent of the population by
2018 from 4 percent four years ago, and MTN has also acquired spectrum to
deliver 4G services.
The launch of 4G spectrum with ZTE will enable Airtel to
build on its market position and “surpass achievements in recent quarters,”
Sola Fanawopo, managing director of Lagos-based consultancy Emaginations, said
by phone. Nigerian subscribers are “crying out” for consistent and fast data
services, he said.
Airtel has seen a surge in data consumption in the
country since 2015 as increasing access to smartphones enables Nigerians to use
their devices for lifestyle, commerce and health services, according to
Airtel’s Ogunsanya. Data is growing faster than voice and will probably account
for more than half the revenue of telecommunications operators in the country
“in the next couple of years,” he said.
Read also: Bharti Airtel forced to cut back on debt
Bharti Airtel has operations in 15 African countries, having
sold businesses in Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone to Orange SA earlier this
year. The depreciation of the naira against the dollar contributed to a fall in
sales in the year through March, the New Dehli-based company said earlier this
month.
An increase in dollar supply by the Central Bank of
Nigeria has enabled Airtel to fund an improvement in service quality after a
severe shortage of the US currency hampered investment, Ogunsanya said. Access
to dollars is “better than it was about three or four months ago,’’ he said.