Bitflux, 2.3GHz spectrum licence winner targets January service rollout

    Written by Adeyemi Adepetun and Bankole Orimisan

   BITFLUX Consortium, the firm that beats Nigeria’s telecommunications giant, Globacom to the 2.3GHz spectrum licence in February is to rollout services in January 2015.

   Bitflux paid over $23.2 million (about N37.1 billion) to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to pick the wholesale wireless broadband service licenses.

  This plan was disclosed by the Chief Executive Officer, VDT Communications Limited, Biodun Omoniyi, during a customer forum and new logo unveiling organised by the firm in Lagos on Wednesday.

   VDT is the promoter of the 2.3GHz licence won Bitflux Consortium. Other members of the consortium are BitCom and Superflux.

   Omoniyi, at the forum disclosed that VDT-Bitflux will begin operations fully next year with the ongoing plan to for the deployment of Long-Term Evolution technology, taking off in January next year.

   “Bitflux will be rolling out in three major states in the first instance and these include Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt in ‎January, 2015. Already, our vendors are deploying equipment for us and necessary installation will follow.

   “We know that people are looking at us with excitement to champion broadband services provisioning. We are fully aware of this and our plans are moving as planned,” he said.

   He also stated “We are building basic redundancy into the network‎ as well to provide seamless experience for Businesses across the country.”

   In a recent interview in Lagos, the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, had stated that contrary to insinuations that Bitflux had not been able to roll out eight months after obtaining the spectrum, the company has been working within the specified conditions of holding the licence.

   “Telecoms infrastructure investment is not as simple as many see it. We just issued the spectrum auction to the company this February. The company, after paying for the spectrum, will need to look for money, get vendors, do deployment, do testing before beginning to offer services. This process takes time and I can tell you that it has been working within schedules,” he said.

   Meanwhile, Omoniyi, who is also a director at the consortium, has said VDT is at the forefront of providing quality telecoms services to various sectors in the country, stressing that the company has recorded success in past 13 years of doing business in Nigeria.

   He said: “Within the last two years, in particular, our connected clients have grown about 60 per cent and even more ‎than that is the number of customers, which have doubled in two years. In terms of locations, we were present in 20 states as at 2012; but today, we are in the 34 states, with the exception of Yobe and Ebonyi.

   He promised that VDT would have increased its Point of Presence (PoP) to all the 36 states and the Federal Capital territory before the end of the year.

   Talking about VDT’s market shares in key sectors, Omoniyi said, “We have up to 85 per cent of the banks on our networks; in the insurance sector, we have about 50 per cent. Also, we have impressive performance ‎in manufacturing, hospitality and public sectors.

 “Also, our carrier business and service providers business are still there. Although, we are far from being perfect, but staying close to our customers and making them the centre of our activities and altogether, it has been a wonderful experience.”

   Earlier, the General Manager, Sales and Marketing of VDT, Mrs. Bimbo Ikumariegbe, has explained the rationale behind the logo change for the company.

   She said: “I am sure a lot of people would be wondering why we are changing logo. We also wondered as well, but we have come to agree that there is a need for it to reflect the new growth, dynamism both for us and in our customers.

   “Over time, we have seen that, indeed, the logo would have to be changed in order to make sure that the logo symbolises the new readiness of VDT to serve its customers and Nigeria as a whole better. The new logo shows our new promising future and the strength that VDT is putting in its operations.

   “We have come out age with 13 years of excellent broadband service delivery. We are attaining group status. We are also improving in our business standard as we are standardising our operations across board; making our operations policy-driven while maintaining discipline and attention to detail and impeccable ‎customer service.”

   She added that plans were also underway by the company for retail market penetration, continuous Business-to –Business (B2B) market penetration with over 40 POPs nationwide ‎and counting.

Culled from thisdaylive.com