By Emeka Aginam

Managing Director of Smile Communications Nigeria Limited. Mr. Michiel Buitelaar has identified that Nigerians are yet to enjoy the benefit of broadband and in this interview highlights that it’s the reason behind his company’s expansion strategies and offerings. He also touches on the challenges associated with operating in Nigeria, but assured that his company will meet its license obligations. Excerpt NETWORK expansion:

About this time last year, we celebrated our 6 years anniversary. The fund we secured last year is used to accelerate national network roll-out, including equipment and services. It is important we spend the money to expand our network to other cities across the nation and further improve the network in existing cities.

We have shown strong presence in Tanzania, Uganda, and Nigeria. In these three countries, we launched unlimited network. We also have presence in Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, but we are yet to roll out the network. We aim to think big, so we do things on the basis of scales.

In developing voice, we did that as a big project for the three countries. We believe that the way we implement unlimited voice network is the way to go. We benefit from the scale, which enable us to provide better product across this market, but it’s still about making it happen in the local market. 

Experience in the market: We are gathering data. There are a lot of things that could be better. Understanding the pricing is very important. Obviously, we have to educate the customers too. People need to understand what data is, people also need to understand that it is not every handset that is ready to receive it. We are convinced that our pricing is good.

Again, there is element of acceptance. Many Nigerians are yet to see the benefits of broad band. Presently, internet access in Nigeria is growing. 90 percent of Nigerians think they need broad band but it is still not there. but I think is still increasing.

Infrastructural challenge: We are aware of infrastructural issues in Nigeria market but I think there is an opportunity for those providing real quality services both in data and voice.

With LTE which is fundamentally a mobile high network and internet which is very different from GSM and also different from 3G, there is hope. In voice over LTE, we offer voice over a digital carrier. If you make a call on 4G/LTE network, the quality is very high that’s one of our claims. When we say super clear voice, we believe that the quality of our voice will beat the existing benchmark in Nigeria.

Market strategies: We want to be seen as high quality, reliable and fast network operator. Our price is not necessarily the cheapest, but we want to be seen as best voice provider . The way we position voice is an example of that and is very well placed and very attractive to both national and international traffic.

Voice services will increase our sales and our revenues to a reasonable extent. The market for voice will not go down. It cannot go away, everybody wants to make a call.