By Prince Osuagwu
FOREMOST Code Division Multiple Access, CDMA, operator in the country, Multilinks, which went under a few months back has returned into the market with a call to the federal government to  provide urgent bail out options for the CDMA operators in the country to forestall their extinction.

This is following its new acquisition by Helios Investment Partners, HIP, owners of Helios Towers Nigeria.

CDMA needs bail out: According to the company,”the Nigerian mobile telecommunications market, operates a technology neutral license regime. The head start advantage enjoyed by the GSM ope’rators was the limitations imposed on the CDMA operators who were only allowed to deal on regional basis.

with the exclusivity period and the tax holiday granted the GSM operators, the CDMA operators are only playing catch-up. To redress this imbalance, government must quickly intervene by coming to the aid of the CDMA operators to save them from total eclipse by the GSM operators”

The acquisition

Helios Investment Partners at the weekend, announced a 100 percent buy-off of Telkom South Africa’s shares in the business, making it a whole Helios affairs.

Multilinks Nigeria, a telecommunications company founded in 1997 to provide handheld and fixed wireless telephone service integrated with high speed Internet service among other services became cash strapped and suffered gradual decline in the telecommunications market, particularly in the face of bourgeoning GSM services in the country.

It had to quickly re-strategise and in 2007, sold majority shares to Telkom South Africa for $410 million. However, Telkom itself after spending up to 9.8 billion rand on the network, could not turn the fortunes around and also had to divest its interest in the company on June 28.

The new acquisition by Helios who has been managing the company under contract,  may have ended a legal battle that halted the purported sale of the company to Visafone Communications Nigeria a few months ago.

Rentalagreement

Helio Towers Nigeria took Telkom South Africa to court immediately the sale to Visafone was announced, claiming that Telkom pulled out of a 10-year rental agreement with Multi Links Communications, in just after three years. Telkom claimed the contract had become invalid, but the Nigeria High Court ruled in favour of Helios Towers Nigeria and said the contract was still valid.

Announcing the new acquisition in Lagos, Chairman of Helios Investment Limited Mr Martins Dirk promised that the company would try its best in turning the fortunes of the telecommunications company around, bringing back the services and products which he claimed have served many Nigerian telecommunications users better.

He also announced the appointment of a Nigerian telecommunication Engineer, Mr Demola Elesho as the Chief Executive Officer of the new Multi-Links adding that with Mr Elesho and a host of other Nigerians at the top echelon of the new company, there were hopes of a new dawn.

Although he observed that the long transition leading up to the latest acquisition of Multi-Links, caused uncertainty and resulted in churn on Multi-Links’ network, he also expressed optimism that with the quality of infrastructure already on ground, a turn around was almost very easy.

He said, “ MultiLinks has a fibre optic network offering national data transmission capacity and limited metro and last mile connectivity and 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.

“Multi-Links constructed its terrestrial fibre optic network connecting 21 of Nigeria’s 36 states, as well as the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja at a cost of over $150 million. Multi-Links’ 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.

Multi-Links’ terrestrial fibre optic network spanning 8,232km provides access to several circa tower sites across several major cities in Nigeria.

Before now, Multi-Links has focused more on the construction and expansion of its terrestrial fibre optic network than on selling capacity on this network to potential customers. Currently Multi-Links’ terrestrial fibre optic networks’ business model entails selling bandwidth to carriers and enterprise customers”.

He noted that Multi-Links was currently focused on improving its performance through cost efficiency, selective penetration and targeting of medium to high-end customer acquisition and retention.

Meanwhile the new CEO, Mr Dem Eleso, said that, Multi-Links’ business was currently being refocused to achieve improved  and cost efficient performance.

Back in the market

“Multi-Links is still in the Nigerian market and currently focusing on serving our customers in the 22 service areas of Lagos, Port Harcourt, Owerri, Onitsha, Awka, Enugu, Makurdi, Abuja, Jos, Bauchi, Katsina, Kano, Kaduna, 1I0rin, Ife, Osogbo, Ibadan, Abeokuta, Sagamu, Ijebu-Ode, Warri and Benin where we currently operate better” Eleso added.