9 December 2011
Airtel Networks Limited, said it 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).
Mr. Deepak Srivastava, Chief Operating Officer announced the investment during a visit by some journalists to Airtel’s newly commissioned Green-Site in Lekki, where the COO recalled Airtel’s recent 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 him, the Green-Sites will contribute to a considerable reduction of CO2 emissions and prevent network outages associated with inconsistent power supply.
Srivastava however 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.
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.
He stated that Airtel has invested heavily on Site Rollout, Power improvement projects, fiber roll-out, microwave replacement, technical engineering, network capacity enhancement and adaptive multiple rate.
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