Zamtel, Zambia’s parastatal telecom firm, plans to increase its mobile phone subscriber base from just over a million to two million next year
According to the company's CEO, Dr. Mupanga Mwanakatwe, Zamtel also has aggressive plans to improve its network and coverage in Zambia.
"We will start rolling out in the first quarter of next year for the whole country, in terms of improving our coverage and our network capacity. It is a lot of work, but we will get started,’’ Mwanakatwe said.
The company has seen a major increase in the number of customers subscribing to the service, especially in the last quarter of this year.
The first and second quarter saw slow increases but the last two quarters have been hugely successful in terms of the number of subscribers and usage patterns, according to Mwanakatwe.
Zamtel’s rate of growth was attributed to the number of promotions it rolled out this year.
"We are getting subscribers who are using the network quite heavily and I think this is to a very large extent a result of the promotions such as the Real Mahala, which allows you to talk from 20:00 to 06:00 hours in the morning, free of charge, as long as you join that promotion which gives you 90 minutes during the day for on-network calls. So these have proved exceedingly popular,’’ added Mwanakatwe.
Nawa Mutumweno
