Telecom Namibia is set to focus on expanding its rural connectivity by leveraging the parastatal’s current footprint to become a leading telecommunications institution in the country.
According to the New Era, this was announced by the company’s recently appointed Chief Executive Officer, Stanley Shanapinda, in a statement to the media.
“We are busy studying the market in terms of locations where we don’t have towers, so we are looking at a rural focus, for example where customers may be on 2G service network, now we are looking at how we can incentivise customers to use faster services,” said Shanapinda.
He explained that Telecom Namibia is looking into installations and conversions from 2G to 3G upgrades as a way for better services. Another option being explored is leveraging their partnerships pertaining to infrastructure sharing and collaboration with market operators where the telco does not exist.
Shanapinda further said resources are always a challenge, “but we are looking at developing a completely new business plan in terms of our 5G roll out and acquiring the necessary investments for this rollout.”
He continued that government has options in stimulating local growth and investment and thus would be looking at financing options through the Development Bank of Namibia, to be able to roll out the 5G infrastructure.
Telecom Namibia has 50% of sites that are 5G ready but the company needs to implement plans to activate those sites to provide the 5G services in the country.
