By Prince Osuagwu

MTN Nigeria has rolled out an investment plan to boost network quality, which it said was underway before the NCC’s hammer fell on the top four telecom operators, including MTN last month.

The telco said that the three pronged plan which included a comprehensive network modernisation and swap-out exercise will be implemented over a period of nine months.

The project involves three technical partners, Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE and entails upgrading and replacing key network components with newer versions for enhanced capacity and much needed improved quality of service.

However, the exercise will be done in clusters, such that select base transceiver stations (BTS) in parts of the country will undergo simultaneous upgrade to ensure that the negative impact of the exercise is brought to its barest minimum. The exercise would carried out at night to minimise impact on the quality of service.

Unfolding the road map to ICT journalists at the Southern Sun Hotels Ikoyi Lagos, at the weekend, a team comprising the company’s Corporate Services Executive, Mr. Wale Goodluck, Chief Technical Officer, Mrs Lynda Saint-Nwafor, GM, Corporate Affairs, Mrs Funmilayo Omogbenigun,  GM, Capital Programmes Group (CPG), Dr. Victor Oduguwa, and Senior Manager, CPG, David Melaiye revealed that the company had voted a whopping US$1.3b for network investment in 2012, which part would be used to sweep out old versions of its Base stations, replacing them with most recent versions that consume very low energy.

The new technology that would be deployed, according to MTN, would retain the international standard of the network but reduce cost due to their energy efficiency and green -environment compliance.

The exercise would see mostly, the BTS that the company started operations with, in the last ten years, phased out to higher technology and energy saving ones.

In fact, Goodluck stated that “our local team working closely with our technical partners and experts began work in April. They have done much of the backend work preparatory to the actual swapping of network components in the days ahead.”

“The network modernisation and swap-out project is part of the US$1.3b investment we have earmarked for 2012, and this investment like many we’ve consistently made since our inception, is in of class quality of service on our network. We are delighted that this project brings us within a grasping distance of the mark”, added.

Presenting the technical details of the project, Chief Technical Officer, Mrs Lynda Saint-Nwafor, said the modernisation and swap-out exercise would affect all aspects of the network from radio to transmission and core network. According to her, all legacy equipment the company had installed for an upward of 10 years are going out, to be replaced with state-of-the-art equipment, with much better capacity and flexibility.