By Prince Osuagwu

MTN Nigeria at the weekend cried out that the flood ravaging most parts of the country has also affected its operations, appealing to its customers and other key stakeholders for patience and understanding.

The operator said that the most unfortunate effect of the flood to its activities is the disruption of its ongoing network modernisation and swap-out exercise.

The company’s Corporate Services Executive, Mr Wale Goodluck said; “Although the various activities related to MTN’s Network Modernisation are progressing steadily, we regret, however, that the pace of work has been considerably challenged by the spate of insecurity coupled with the unprecedented flooding being experienced in many parts of the country.”

The network optimisation exercise will affect over 4,000 base stations out of over 10, 000 across the country.  Goodluck added that the task that MTN was undertaking was like building a new network, considering that it was seeking to replicate what it achieved over a six year period in just nine months.

He explained that “several swap-outs have reached very advanced stages of completion. The entire network modernisation process is a very logistic-intensive one and the problem of insecurity has seriously affected the pace of work in some parts of the country. In at least 13 states, flooding has created additional logistic impediments such that the pace of the ongoing network modernisation efforts has slowed down”.

On the challenges the network’s teeming subscribers have been going through in recent times, Goodluck acknowledged some disruption over the last few weeks saying; “We sincerely express our thanks to our customers for their patience. As much as possible, we would stick to our original plan of carrying out the network procedures only at night, in order to minimize disruptions to services. We are doing everything possible, including doubling the work teams, to finalise the project as quickly as possible.”

He expressed the company’s appreciation with many communities that have given the network modernisation Engineers saying such supports were much-needed tonic in the face of the enormous logistic-challenges the project regularly encounters.

MTN’s current network modernization and swap-out exercise which began in July 2012 is expected to cover the entire country and was originally expected to span a period of nine months. Its objectives are to considerably enhance capacity on the MTN Network and improve service quality.

Under the project, which is being implemented by a combined team of MTN engineers and technical partners that include Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE, key network components are being swapped with the latest upgrades in the industry. In addition, current power systems are being replaced with hybrid power systems which are more environment-friendly.