Nigerian incumbent Nitel has been testing LTE with a view to launching commercial services in November.
According to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, the telco will initially offer services in the capital Abuja, Lagos, and Port Harcourt, before extending coverage to other cities throughout the country.
The report, published late last week, claimed that services will be offered under the Ntel brand.
Launching 4G would be a rare piece of positive news to emerge from a truly troubled telco.
Multiple failed attempts to privatise the company in recent years led to Nitel’s fixed and mobile networks going offline.
Fresh hope came in late December 2014 in the form of the NATCOM consortium, which emerged as the preferred bidder for Nitel and its mobile unit Mtel. It completed the acquisition in April, paying the final instalment in the US$252.5 million purchase price.
However, Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari has since ordered an investigation into the sale, following claims that the process was opaque, and that Nitel was deliberately undervalued. That investigation is ongoing.
