Telecom giant to increase expenditure of Nigerian arm to $1 billion

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May 23, 2016 10:20 AM

Krishna Chetty, acting chief technology officer at MTN South Africa disclosed this in Johannesburg last week

MTN Group's interim executive chairman Phuthuma Nhleko, file. REUTERS/Aladin Abdel Naby

Media reports say the MTN group has raised the capital expenditure (Capex) target for 2016 for its Nigeria arm to about $1 billion from $700 million, despite the outstanding $3.4 billion fine issued on the telecom giant by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

Krishna Chetty, acting MTN South Africa chief technology officer disclosed this in Johannesburg last week, according to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek report.

MTN Nigeria CEO, Ferdi Moolman, said that the company is positioned for growth and investing in different things, especially broadband services.

The telecom giant recently acquired Visafone, the last surviving CDMA operator in Nigeria.

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“We have started looking at 4G and Visafone had frequency which allows us to do this extension, so if we want to start rolling out 4G and we want to take better services to the public we had to acquire a platform that will enable us do this,” said Moolman.

“We see huge potential and growth in Nigeria and Mtn wants to be part of that growth. We would like to take this company from just a telco network to something that is a people’s company,” he added.

In October 2015, the NCC issued MTN a fine of N1.04 trillion ($5.2 billion), which was later reduced to N674 billion. relating to the timing of disconnection of the 5.1 million active MTN subscribers with improperly registered SIM cards calculated at N200, 000 for each subscriber.

The South Africa-based company has paid N50 billion to the Nigerian government as part of an out-of-court settlement fee.

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