MTN signs a five-year agreement with NuRAN to expand its presence in rural areas of Côte d’Ivoire
October 12th 2022
As of June 30, 2022, Côte d’Ivoire had nearly 46.5 million mobile phone subscribers, according to data from the regulator. MTN controlled 34% market share against 44% for Orange, the market leader.
Telecommunications operator MTN Côte d’Ivoire has signed a renewable five-year agreement with Canadian telecoms infrastructure provider NuRAN Wireless to expand its network presence in rural areas of the Eburnean nation. Unveiled on Tuesday, October 11, this collaboration will notably see the deployment of 1,000 sites under the Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) model.
The project, we learn, is expected to support 2G and 3G with a variety of site categories to cover different population densities and coverage areas.
“ We are extremely pleased to add Côte d’Ivoire to our growing portfolio of African countries and bring essential mobile connectivity to potentially over 3 million people. Côte d’Ivoire is a stable country both politically and financially. The country has well-maintained roads and excellent infrastructure that helps speed up the installation of new sites compared to other countries ,” said Francis Létourneau, President and CEO of NuRAN Wireless.
MTN Côte d’Ivoire becomes the fourth African subsidiary of the MTN Group to sign such an agreement with NuRAN after MTN South Sudan, MTN Namibia and MTN Sudan. These different investments reflect the MTN Group’s objective to connect people in rural areas to these different African markets as part of its ambition to become the main provider of digital services on the continent in the coming years.
This collaboration will generate an estimated over $75 million in gross revenue over the life of the contract, assuming all 1,000 sites are completed. It should allow MTN to reach millions of additional people and improve its position on the Ivorian telecom market as well as its revenues. NuRan Wireless, meanwhile, is moving towards its stated goal of reaching 10,000 contracted sites in Africa. Thanks to this agreement, the Canadian company increases the number of its sites under contract on the continent to 4,142.
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