JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-The Nigerian government announced it has awarded several contracts valued at US$202 million total for the expansion of the Nitel GSM network.
Ojo Maduekwe, minister of transport, said the contracts would be completed in three phases during a period of 18 months and would boost the Nitel GSM capacity to roughly 1.4 million subscribers.
Maduekwe added that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) had approved the contracts for network expansion, as access to telecommunications had tripled in Nigeria since the arrival of an open and competitive telecommunications environment.
The first phase of the project, which consists of the installation of cellular broadcast systems at a cost of US$56 million, was awarded to ZTE. The second phase, at a cost US$60 million, was awarded to Alcatel, and the third phase at a cost of US$12.6 million was awarded to Siemens.
In addition, Motorola Nigeria won the contract to supply central network nodes at a cost of US$12 million.
