SANDTON, South Africa-Telecel International, one of the most active cellular investors in Africa, split into two separate companies as from the end of April. The resulting companies are Telecel One, run by the American Joseph Gatt with headquarters in the United States, and Telecel Africa. Miko Rwayitare runs the latter company, with well over 30 employees, from the head office in Geneva and a marketing branch in Sandton, South Africa.
Explaining the split, Michel Tsumbu Nkongo, director of licensing and business development for Telecel Africa, said the shareholders of Telecel International disagreed on their approach to developing telecommunications in Africa. Telecel Africa wanted to move away from AMPS and focus on GSM technology and wireless local loop solutions, while Telecel One was aimed at developing
CDMA mobile systems.
“We felt Africa was not quite ready for CDMA. In Zambia, for example, Telecel is migrating its network from CDMA to GSM,” said Tsumbu Nkongo.
Telecel One is now effectively in charge of the group’s operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and Guinea. It has also taken over Afrilink, Telecel’s lucrative satellite network that has a 36 MHz transponder on Intelsat, and a control center in Belgium. The gross revenue of the satellite network for 1998 was well over US$30 million.
Telecel Africa will run the networks in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Burundi, Central Africa Republic and Ivory Coast, as well as the additional licenses in Togo, Benin and Niger. It is also closely monitoring the wave of PTT privatizations in Africa.
In March, Telecel Africa joined an international consortium consisting of Deutsche Telekom and WorldTel to form a new national carrier in Uganda following the privatization of the parastatal. The license includes deployment of a GSM cellular network.
Telecel Africa recently strengthened its position in Africa by taking on NAIL, one of South Africa’s most powerful black-empowerment financial and industrial groups, as a strategic partner.
The original Telecel International Group rolled out its first AMPS network in December 1989 and since then has rolled out 13 networks with a total of 90,000 GSM subscribers (75,000 on Telecel Africa and 15,000 on Telecel One).
“Our strategy is to aggressively enter small, but lucrative markets in Africa,” said Tsumbu Nkongo. “We do not have plans to enter the South African market at this stage as it is too competitive.”
