Mtel, the mobile arm of the Nigerian Tel-ecommunications Ltd now has 983,000 active subscribers on its network, the Chief Marketing Officer of the company, Mr Edwin Momife, has announced.

Speaking at a media forum, organised by XLR8 Communications Ltd to announce plans for the staging of a national conference on value-added services in Lagos last week, Momife noted that Mtel had repositioned itself to make a greater impact in the telecommunications sector.

He said that the management of the company had devoted time to building "an advanced and reliable network" and was now poised to enter into stiff competition with the other networks.

According to him, the company has built 11 mobile switching centres around the country - a development that would enable more subscribers to be accommodated on the network.

He said the company's emphasis had now shifted to building backbone transmission infrastructure along major highways in the country, noting that the facility had been deployed on the Kaduna Birin-Kebbi highway.

Asked why the price of Mtel's SIM Pack was still exhorbitant compared to other companies, Momife said that Mtel was offering quality service that was lacking in other networks.

He said the company had completed interconnection agreements with the other mobile networks and that short messages services could now be sent to and and from MTN and Glo Mobile.

The Mtel Chief Marketing Officer said that the company was interested in offering a variety of value-added services, expressing the determination of the Mtel to work closely with XLR8 to give maximum service to telephone subscribers in the country.

The chief executive officer of XLR8, Mr Calixthus Okoruwa, enjoined the telephone networks to educate telephone users on the range of value-added services on their networks.

He said that XLR8 had packaged a conference, tagged "e-NNOVATE, scheduled for Feb.3 and Feb.4 in Lagos to enlighten subscribers in the country on the existing value-added services on the telephone networks.

There are about 8 million telephone users in the country at present, according to official records obtained from the Nigerian Communications Commission. (NCC)