Mohammed Shosanya
28 November 2011
Lagos — Helios Investment Partners(HIP),the new owner of Multilinks has promised to reposition the company along service delivery and profitability.
The development came as the company said it has successfully acquired 100percent equity interest in Multilinks on October 3rd,this year from its previous shareholder, Telcom South Africa.
Chairman of the company, Martins Dirk, who announced this at a press conference in Lagos, explained that the repositioning became necessary in view of the recent transition the telecommunication firm went through which saw it losing some of its customers.
He said that the new management of the company would also stabilize and grow the customer base.
According to Dirk, the experience his company has garnered in the past seven years in Africa’s communication market would count in its new drive to turn around Multilinks.
“We have over 7 years experience in communication market in Africa.We are in 22 countries in the continent.This alone would count in our new task to turn around Multilinks.We are not in a hurry to take any strategic partnership.We want to build the company.We have to work and grow the business.”
Dirk, who said HIP currently has assets under management in excess of $1.9 billion, stressed that long transition leading up to HIP’s acquisition of Multilinks caused uncertainty about the brand that impacted Multilinks’ brand and resulted in churn on Multilinks’ network.
According to him, Multilinks essentially runs two telecommunications service business units, namely: mobile business utilizing CDMA technology and fibre optic network .
“Significant investment including total capital investment in excess of $1 billion has been made into this network, increasing the footprint of the network more than six fold over the past 4 years.
“Multilinks constructed its terrestrial fibre optic network connecting 21 of Nigeria’s 36 states, as well as the Federal Capital Territory at a cost of over $150 million. Multilinks’ terrestrial fibre optic network is one of only four active national and the only open access fibre optic networks in Nigeria and is the only independent national transmission network,” he said.
AllAfrica – All the Time