Africa's biggest mobile operator, MTN Group Ltd., is spending a boatload of dough this year to improve its network in Nigeria: more than a whopping $1 billion, according to a report.
MTN is making the gargantuan investment after Nigeria's National Communications Commission gave MTN, Globacom Ltd. and Bharti Airtel Ltd.'s Nigerian unit an ultimatum: improve mobile network services or they would be barred from signing up new customers, Bloomberg reported.
"The investment will relieve congestion and improve the quality of the network," MTN Nigeria spokesman Akinwale Goodluck told Bloomberg in a phone interview.
Goodluck said the company will use the funds to support second- and third-generation technologies, its core network and power generators to run transmission stations.
With a head office in Johannesburg, South Africa, MTN Group Limited has 21 GSM licenses in Africa and the Middle East and served 141.6 million subscribers at the end of December, according to its website. MTN Group operates in South and East Africa, West and Central Africa and the Middle East and North Africa.
