JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-MTN Nigeria announced it has suspended sales of its prepaid starter packs (SIM Packs) and handsets to the public. The network’s contract packages will not be affected.
Afam Edozie, chief marketing officer for MTN Nigeria, said it was a hard decision to take while the company begins to accelerate the rate at which it is building capacity to cope with demand. Edozie explained that the network’s current capacity could accommodate 1.2 million subscribers and that with more than 1 million subscribers on the network, there could be a real possibility of not being able to cope with the peak traffic volumes of the network.
Edozie said: “We regret that given the several intermediate phases between procuring infrastructure and actually installing them, we need a short break at this time to enable our build rate to catch up with demand.”
MTN’s board of directors had recently approved US$60 million to accelerate rollout of base stations, especially in the more densely populated areas of Lagos, Onitsha, Abuja and Port Harcourt.
