Nigerian Operator Prepares for GPRS Launch

Nigeria's MTEL GSM network is now GPRS ready. The chief marketing officer of MTEL, Mr. Edwin Moore Momife made this disclosure at a press conference in Lagos on the forthcoming Value Added Services Expo, tagged e-NNOVATE 2005 which is being part sponsored by the GSM company. According to Momife, the MTEL network would be ready to deploy GPRS-based broadband data and content services by the end of March.

GPRS, Momife, said, has already been tested successfully by MTEL in a pilot environment. The company, he stated is working with Ericsson, Motorola, Huawei and ZTE on the GPRS project. "We have secured sufficient high throughput bandwidth via NITEL Sat 3 connection and have also successfully integrated our switches and transmission infrastructure across the country". The objective, he said, "is to ensure full nationwide availability of GPRS rather than selective availability as currently obtains. We believe MTEL subscribers, ought to be able to benefit from GPRS if they are within an MTEL-covered area, no matter how remote".

And it is not only subscribers who posses GPRS-enabled phones who will benefit from MTEL's GPRS deployment. "Our open value added service policy is such that content providers will be able to offer services via SMS and IVR (interactive voice response) to our subscribers who do not posses GPRS-enabled phones"."

Posted to the site on 31st January 2005