MTN Plans To Launch 4G LTE Network This Coming July 2016

MTN Nigeria is about to roll out its Fourth Generation Long Term Evolution (4G LTE) broadband offerings present day by way of July 2016 in decided towns, the usage of the 800MHz frequency obtained from Visafone LTD in advance this 12 months.

MTN plans to have approximately 1,500 LTE collocated web sites backhauled with fibre optics this year.

Management had final week exclusively mentioned that MTN Nigeria paid N47.5 billion to gather Visafone’s property, along with its frequency and 2.1 million clients as a way to enhance the fine of MTN's broadband offerings for its subscribers.

The Chief Execultive Officer, MTN, MR Ferdinand Moolman, showed, for the duration of MTN organization LTD's first region consequences analyst conference with funding companies recently held in Johannesburg, South Africa, that the primary purpose MTN received Visafone was to get access to the frequency which might permit it roll out LTE. He stated that MTN has started out the process to migrate all the Visafone subscribers onto its network with the intention to clean up the frequency and start rolling out LTE.

“It delayed our capital expenditure (CAPEX) rollout during the first quarter a little bit because we needed to realign some of our CAPEX towards the LTE rollout. We started the migration of the subscribers and we hope to conclude that soon.  The plans are to have commercial LTE available towards the end of the second quarter, maybe  early  quarter three,  albeit  very  limited,  obviously  not  substantial,  and then start expanding  this  towards  quarter three,  quarter four and  first quarter of next year. It is obviously a comprehensive project,” Moolman said.

The Chief Financial Officer, MTN Institution, Bret goschen, stated, “We had been enticing with our predominant original system manufacturers (OEMS) and providers and making sure that the CAPEX rollout keeps as planned. We are very near finalising short-time period preparations, bridge-type facilities with the vendors, after which long run preparations around the ECA-sponsored credit score financing we should have in location by using the mid 12 months.”

The Chief Operating Officer, MTN Group, Jyoti Desai, stated that they have taken a totally designated evaluation of mtn nigeria’s statistics utilization and where they have to be rolling out the LTE network inside the first location.

“We looked at the handset ecosystem and revenue  opportunity  and  have  identified  some  of  the  major cities,” he said.

In line with him, MTN Nigeria’s LTE rollout will now not effect its CAPEX as it already has space reservation in its joint tower organization. He also said that the LTE could be rolled out in existing base station web sites.