Telecom Namibia plans to invest over N$2.3 billion in the next five years to modernize its network and improve quality of service.
The national telecommunications operator’s CEO Dr Stanley Shanapinda, told The Brief in an exclusive interview that the company’s old infrastructure, coupled with cable theft and power disruption, was responsible for increased cases of network disruptions.
“With regards to our legacy network, we are looking at investing over N$2.3 billion in the next five years in line with our strategy to modernize the network. The Legacy issue is the number issue that is contributing to our environment in addition to the power as well,” he said.
“We are managing a legacy network, which leads to a lot of failures as a result. Added to that is a problem of copper theft that we have been experiencing and its surging in the past months and as well as the theft of batteries in the sites. The big challenge is also the power supply that is not stable as well.”
He said this year alone, the company requires at least N$689 million in investment and is seeking to partly fund the requirement through some external funding.
“We are looking at upping our investments to global trends or 18-20 % of our revenue and we have presented those plans to our shareholders. We presented our plan to our board in August and December last year. The revised version has been approved and we presented it to our shareholder in March this year with the changes. We need roughly N$689 million this year to invest in our network and for that we need to go to external funding for a portion of that. That requires approval from shareholder level,” he said.
Dr Shanapinda said the telco was currently working on upgrading its mobile network in partnership with its subsidiary, Powercom.
“In the meantime, we are doing drive testing with our mobile coverage, we are optimizing our network. You would have seen places such as Stampriet and Hosea Kutako international airport that we have upgraded to 4G.With our subsidiary, Powercom, we are rolling out new towers countrywide,” he said on The Brief Interview.
To stabilize its network being affected by an unstable power supply, Dr Shanapinda added that “in order to stabilize the power supply, we are replacing batteries across the country. We have also approached the power supply companies. Cenored, NamPower, City of Windhoek, to ensure that when there are disruptions, we are informed about it and also to ensure that there is downtime stability during that time.”
Commenting on losses incurred due to vandalism and network disruptions, the Telecom CEO said, “We are still quantifying the revenue losses that we have incurred with our business intelligence team and that’s a work in progress.”
Click link to watch full interview with Telecom Namibia CEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW-WcyHRRZw&feature=youtu.be
