NuRAN Wireless partners with Trans Africa Towers to build 500 telecom towers over three years in DR Congo
December 14th 2022
According to official data, nearly half of the Congolese population does not have access to telecom services. Operators need more capacity to extend their network coverage to unconnected populations.
Canadian telecom infrastructure solutions provider NuRAN Wireless Inc. and telecom tower manager Trans Africa Towers will deploy 500 telecom sites over a three-year period in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The collaboration is expected to improve mobile network coverage in the country, including rural areas. A signed agreement between the two parties was unveiled on Monday, December 12.
According to Sleiman Haddad, Chairman and CEO of Trans Africa Towers, about two-thirds of the new telecom sites that will be built under this project will be located in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, “ areas torn by the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo ”. Improved communications should help strengthen the security of remote and vulnerable villages in these provinces, he added.
This partnership comes in a context where the vast majority of the population does not yet have access to telecom services. In its “Mobile Economy Sub-Saharan Africa 2022”, the Mobile Operators and Manufacturers Association (GSMA) reports that Sub-Saharan Africa had 515 million unique mobile subscribers in 2021. This figure represents an increase of about 20 million subscribers compared to 2020, but the mobile penetration rate in the region is only 46%.
It is in this context that NuRAN Wireless has set itself the goal of reaching 10,000 contracted telecom sites in Africa. The company has already signed several partnerships, notably with the South African group MTN in South Sudan, Sudan, Namibia and Côte d’Ivoire. In the DRC, the company had already signed a similar agreement with Orange in 2021. The contract provides for the deployment of 2,000 new telecom towers in the country over forty months.
According to the latest statistics from the Post and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Congo (ARPTC), the DRC had 47.8 million mobile phone subscribers last September, a penetration rate of 50.2% .
“ Over the years, Trans Africa Towers has developed strong expertise and capabilities in deploying mobile infrastructure for rural connectivity. We are confident that the collaboration between our two companies will result in successful large-scale deployments to bridge the digital divide, ” said Francis Létourneau, President and CEO of NuRAN Wireless.
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