2004-11-Jan, Lagos

BASKING in the euphoria of successful re-engineering of its Lagos Switch with Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 IX, Starcomms Limited has flagged off its networks in Kano and Maiduguri.

The Kano network went live earlier this month while the Maiduguri network was inaugurated this week.

Managing director of the company, Mr Dirk Smet also said the focus of his company is to be the best private telecomunications operator (PTO) in the country.

Mr Smet hopes that the events in the coming year would be more interesting and ultimately lead to improvements in communication.

Some of the recent developments in the company is the reduction of international tariff rates by about 50 per cent for international calls.

Consequently, calls to United Kingdom, USA, Europe and Canada are now charged N50 per minute.

"Calls to African countries are also down. Calls to Africa zone one including South Africa, Ghana, Benin and so on now cost N50 per minute while calls to Africa zones two and three, Asia zones one and three, Middle East, South America, and Sattellite connection now attract between N70 and N90 per minute" Mr Smet added.

The company said it has alliance with Virgin Technologies and GS Telecom both licensed to carry international traffic over Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) carriers.

The Starcomms boss said the alliance with the companies have significantly impacted positively on this downward review.

He however deplores the practice where subscribers are made to pay access charges when their phones are down or do not have enough credit.

Starcomms Lagos network has about 500,000 capacity with 65,000 already connected while the Kano network has 40,000 capacity.

He said customers cannot necessarily blame anybody for this endemic Nigerian Telecoms Industry problem, he looks forward for all operators to put their efforts together in other to have a seamless interconnect regime.

"We have to be patient with NITEL because the infrastructure is not optimal and it requires huge investments to develop NITEL to Global standards. NITEL has to digitalize the entire transmission Network for smooth traffic flow" Mr Smet said adding that call completion, should be at least 99.96 percent for it to make sense and not the present 20 percent rate.

According to the Managing Director, "we at Starcomms want to build a solid Network for voice and data to cater to the needs of the Nigerian people. We are not doing anything special just that we want to do it better".

He explained that it is the desire of Starcomms to empower Nigerians through their provision of Telecommunication services and job creation. "For instance, all our base stations are built by local contractors as well as maintained by them", adding that "since we have endorsed as approved Starcormms suppliers are also recommended to other Telecom operators. He said they are not necessarily cheaper but very effective, both from a delivery and goal perspective.

Mr Smet also threw some light on the disparity between tariff charges by GSM operators and PTOs saying the GSM operators invest more on base stations to cater for the possible mobility of its subscribers whereas the PTO does not need to do that. He simply caters for fixed services. But in terms of building base stations, he admitted that it is much more expensive to build a CDMA base station than GSM. "CDMA is a new technology! In fact, it cost about 40 percent more to construct CDMA base station than GSM base station".

Smet said Starcomms got in 10 months 65,000 subscribers connected to its Lagos Network and hopes to hit the 80,000 mark by the end of the year. Starcomms has opened customer support centers in Falomo, Ikoyi, Surulere and Ikeja all in Lagos.

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