Airtel Nigeria has assured its customers of improved services within the shortest possible time.
The chief executive officer of Aitrel Nigeria, Mr Rajan Swaroop, disclosed this at a media chat with journalists in Abuja, at the weekend.
He also threw the company’s weight behind the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on the proposed mobile number portability (MNP), saying the subscribers in the country should be allowed to make choice of the network to be used.
He said that since the take-over of Zain by the Indian telecommunications giant, Bharti Airtel, there had been greater improvement on the quality of services rendered by the GSM service provider. “We have done a very successful one year.
We have done many things and have won many acclaims for Nigerians and Africa. The progress has begun in terms of movement to the market.
“We have very innovative offerings whether it is 2Good, 2Good Extra, Mega Promo, Big Family and recently, we launched Blackberry which is being offered here in this market,” he said.
He said the GSM firm introduced N50 recharge card so that everybody could recharge his or her phone.
Swaroop, who disclosed that the telecommunication operators in Nigeria were faced with a lot of challenges such as epileptic power supply, vandalisation of infrastructure and multiple taxations amongst others, said that Airtel was determined to render best services in the country.
While urging the federal government to ensure adequate security of the telecommunications infrastructure, the chief executive said Airtel has had five top cable cuts in the country, which according to him, affected their service delivery.
On SIM card registration, Swaroop, who refused to disclose the number of registration centres Airtel has set up nationwide, added that his company had deployed quite a number of registration machines across the country to ensure the success of the SIM registration exercise.
Speaking further, the Airtel boss said the GSM service operator had engaged the two equipment vendors; Ericsson and Huawei Technologies, adding that Huawei would handle their networks in the northern and southern parts of the country to enable them offer quality services to their customers.
He said that Airtel had invested over $600 million in Nigeria, and that more investments would be made.
The chief executive officer said Airtel would invest in 300 cell sites, stating that its call centre services have improved as a result of the training of 1, 300 call centre officials. Swaroop also disclosed that Airtel has expanded its customer and distribution centres in Nigeria.
On the recent problem involving Airtel call centre service providers, SPANCO and their workers, he said the matter had been resolved. Although, the workers were not Airtel workers, he said Airtel has asked SPANCO to address the matter and ensure that it was addressed.
Also speaking, the chief operating officer of the firm, Deepak Sriavastava, said the telecom firm would double its investment in Nigeria.