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Publication Date: July 2008
EVENT SPOTLIGHT
Nigeria’s fixed market has long been shared between the wireline-based incumbent, Nitel, and a myriad of private telecom operators (PTOs): smaller, regional, fixed wireless operators. For most of their history, PTOs and their CDMA-based networks attracted little attention from investors, who flocked instead to the more dynamic mobile sector. Thanks to regulatory changes in 2006 and 2007, however, the growth potential of many of these PTOs has increased dramatically. Ten PTOs were granted universal service access licenses (USALs), giving them nationwide access to the Nigerian market and allowing them to compete in the mobile sector with Nigeria’s five existing mobile operators.
We believe that many of these PTOs are particularly well positioned to exploit the high-end, data-heavy segment of Nigeria’s mobile market, due to the maturity and flexibility of their infrastructure, their head start in the 3G arena, and the new financial and managerial capabilities they have gained as a result of recent mergers and acquisitions.
Author: Badii Kechiche
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