Leading Telecoms Operator, Airtel Networks Limited, has invested over $600m in the past one year to expand the capacity and enhance the robustness of its network in pursuit of world class Quality of Service (QoS).

The company’s Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director, Mr. Deepak Srivastava, announced the investment during a visit by some journalists to Airtel’s newly commissioned Green-Site in Lekki, Lagos.

At a brief parley after the media tour, Srivastava recalled that Airtel recently announced a landmark deal with Ericsson to upgrade 250 diesel powered stations in Nigeria to Green-sites, an initiative designed to enable the company harness solar energy to operate its base stations.

According to the Chief Operating Officer, the Green-Sites will contribute to a considerable reduction of CO2 emissions and prevent network outages associated with inconsistent power supply.

Srivastava regretted that non-availability of regular grid power supply to sites across the country is responsible for over 70% of down time resulting in poor QoS, adding that the Green-Site would go a long way in addressing this critical challenge.

He hinted that the company was exploring other options including a partnership with the World Bank to address the nagging issue of power supply especially to the remote communities.

“Even as we pursue the Green-Site solution”, he revealed “Airtel has in the last six months installed dual generating sets in 200 sites and installed high back up batteries in 600 sites, while noting that an additional high capacity back up batteries and 500 new Generating Sets are to be deployed by March 2012”.

He lamented that in some other countries, operators are concerned with managing customer experience rather than keeping the sites up as is the case in Nigeria, where power outages, fibre cut and community issues have combined to undermine the integrity of the network quality.

Mr. Srivastava, who was accompanied by Chief Technical Officer, Awadhesh Kumar Kalia; Regulatory Director, Osondu Nwokoro and Corporate Communications and CSR Director, Emeka Oparah, disclosed that Airtel has, in the last one year, continued to make significant CAPEX (capital expenditure) investment towards improving network quality and has embarked on specific initiatives to expand its network coverage.

Said he, “Airtel has invested heavily on Site Rollout, Power improvement projects, fiber roll-out, microwave replacement, technical engineering, network capacity enhancement and adaptive multiple rate”.

He added that Airtel has built over 500 additional sites in the last six months and intends to complete an additional 1000 sites by March 2012.

Commenting on the company’s Fibre Rollout initiative, the Chief Officer hinted that Airtel had commenced a drive to aggressively grow its existing 4500km of fiber by 1800km, giving a total of 6,300km by March 2012 to provide alternate and multipath redundancy and additional trunk capacity, hinting that this will reduce the impact of fiber cuts on network availability.

On Microwave Replacement, network capacity and technical engineering, Srivastava revealed that Airtel has embarked on several improvement initiatives and is replacing old Microwave radio links with modern high capacity equipment and a total of 150 hops are to be replaced by March 2012.

“We are committed to improving the capacity and robustness of our network because it is equally in our interest as we continue to grow our customer base. Nigerians should rest assured that we will co-operate with the regulator to ensure that the prescribed quality standards are always met and even surpassed”

http://tekedia.com/31108/airtel-nigeria-invests-600m-network-capacity-quality/

Who cares if the spend trillions.
For crying out loud,simply deliver good service.

may be they threw the money away. as for me i have not seen any improvement

They had so much to invest but went ahead to sack staff& reduce staff salaries by up to 75% in some cases.Building capacity indeed,that company no mata d name it goes by is cursed

Yeye people, they invested the 600million in hiring more Indians and sacking more nigerians, Mtscheww, Wetin make dem leading telecom?mtsheww

It's possible thy might have spent some funds on upgrading,[b]but most times [/b]this multinationals over-hype this funds for marketing strategy.

well, to me they have really improved their network if a state like Gombe State can get HSDPA on AIRTEL INTERNET that shows improvement

Their calls appear to be actually cheaper.

jain, tratel, bonatel, frain, sokanet. . .
am trying to predict airtel's next name, because that company will fail soon.
. . .
Meltel, landtel, seatel, portel , etctel. . .

Airtel is a network for the poor, Am sorry to say , MTN Rocksssssssssssss

Ijogz K:

Airtel is a network for the poor, Am sorry to say , MTN Rocksssssssssssss

That's pretty presumptuous, as Airtel is the only network that seems to work (when it does) where I am. Glo, Etisalat and MTN are extremely temperamental, everyone always ends up going back to their Airtel line. So MTN might "rock" where you are, but that isn't the case for everyone.

@ OP, that vomit is just regurgitated info I read/heard about ages ago. Nothing has changed. The service hasn't improved since taking over from Zain, in fact it's worse. I still only get EDGE on my area on a good day. The only time I see 3G or HSDPA is when I'm in another area, and this is in Lagos.

I'll believe it when I see it, but I won't be holding my breath.

From the reactions so far very few seem impressed by numbers just quality. No one is concerned where they get the money just perform no matter how harsh the environment. These are the benefits of true privatisation in an open market.

If the government was investing half that amount we will be up in arms as we do frequently for power and petroleum projects. So you wonder why people insist on government hanging onto these industries.

no airtel 3g in uniport

Glo rocks pass them all. Currently using Hsdpa in ma village ,

for me airtel is the best, i have MTN MODEM but i coverted it to AIRTEL INTERNET and don`t remember when last i recharge my MTN LINE, AIRTEL have internet package plan that is cheaper than any network, i won`t reveal that plan    before they notice and adjust it or maybe they are aware and just leave it that way, please that understand that plan should continue using it without making noise.

here is pic

That is money wasted. I have not seen any improvements in Airtel over the past year. Of the four GSM networks, Airtel is the least exciting. They used to be great, my first modem was a Zain modem, but today I use it when it is very very very very necessary (every other network is off). I wish them luck, but if this is all they could achieve with $600 million, I suggest they spend $6 billion in the coming year.