Airtel Ghana is claiming that it has invested $11 billion into Ghana so far and it is committed to investing some $1 billion into expanding its network in 2011.
The telecoms provider made the claim on its Facebook page ‘Move2Airtel’ August 12, 2011.
However, when ghanabusinessnews.com called up the Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Airtel Mr, Mrinal Roy, he said he was in no position to comment.
The Corporate Communications and External Affairs Manager of Airtel, Mr. Donald Gwira, when he was contacted sounded rather surprised at the figure and promised to cross-check and get back to ghanabusinessnews.com, but has yet to return our call.
Meanwhile, India’s biggest telecoms provider Bharti Airtel bought the assets of Zain in Africa for a record sum of $10.7 billion in June 2010, an acquisition that the World Bank described as one of the largest in the world that year. Bharti later changed Zain Ghana’s name to Airtel Ghana in November 2010.
Airtel is one of the five mobile service providers currently operating in Ghana currently.
The company according to National Communications Authority (NCA) data has 1,888,332 subscibers as at the end of June 2011.
Meanwhile, exclusive information in the possession of ghanabusinessnews.com shows that in the first 25 days since the beginning of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in Ghana at the end of July 2011, about 8,000 mobile customers have switched over to Airtel from other service providers, and about 2,000 have left the network to the others, making it the second highest gainer.
By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi