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Benin: Another GSM Operator for Country
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Highway Africa News Agency (Grahamstown)
16 August 2007
Posted to the web 21 August 2007
Gérard Guedegbe
Cotonou
The Benin Government held an extraordinary cabinet meeting on Friday August 10, 2007 and came out with a decision to grant a user licence to a new operator of mobile telephony called GLOBALCOM Limited,'Glo'.
GLOBALCOM, a well known brand in West Africa is ranked as the second biggest GSM operator in Nigeria.
According to industry observers, 'Glo' wants to settle in Benin to fill the gap left by the suspension of services by Moov and Areeba/MTN. The decision whether to reinstate the services of Moov and Areeba/MTN is still pending.
However, it has also emerged that in fact, Moov and Areeba/MTN are willing to sign the new agreement that will grant them the user license at the cost of 30 billion CFA (approximately 60 million US dollars) for a ten year period, only if the government gives them free tax on the equipment they would be importing to develop their services. Before 'Glo' can release its services however, a payment of 33 billion FCFA must be deposited with the regulatory authority or else the license is forfeited.
There is however fears that the license granted to 'Glo' may be too much for the market to absorb considering the fact that the four existing GSM operators have a subscriber base of only 1, 258, 000 among them.
According to the Executive Director of GlobalCOM, Adewale Sangowana, the schedule to launch their network is already complete and will be implemented before long and the launch will made within 60 days after the signature of the protocol.
The recruitment of personnel, the search for buildings to shelter the company and other preliminary activities are already in place, he said.
For Mr. Adéwalé Sangowana, Global COM will commit itself to an infrastructure rollout strategy that will give coverage to the country's major towns and cities in the first year, and then spread the service to all the regions of the country within the next five years. Concerning the suspension measure of Moov and Areeba/MTN, a meeting was held on the 13th of August 2007 between the Benin Head of State and the executives of both Moov and Areeba/MTN to find a solution to their impasse but the meeting failed to come up with any solution on whether the two can resume services or not.
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In the meantime, close to 900 000 subscribers of Moov and Areeba/MTN are without services since the two suspended operations on July 12, 2007 when the telecommunications regulatory authority disconnected their technical equipment from the national grid.
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