Africell makes first call in Angola and wants to reach six million customers

In an interview with Lusa, the executive president of Africell Angola, Chris Lundh also stated that after Luanda, Africell should reach Lubango, Benguela and Lobito within the next year.

"Our commercial services will be fully operational in February 2022", indicated the CEO of the telecommunications company, which has already invested more than 100 million dollars in Angola.

An amount that should continue to increase next year, as the company plans to build more mobile network towers, especially in the first half of 2022, and expects to extend operations to three other cities (Lubango, Benguela and Lobito) at the end of the year. second quarter, a "considerable" investment that could reach 150 million dollars.

Chris Lundh highlighted that the operator's network has a capacity of six million customers and that this is a "scalable" number. "We are looking forward to reaching that number and preferably more as the network can easily be expanded almost to infinity in terms of the number of subscribers, whether voice or data," he stressed.

The head of Africell pointed out that the company is strongly committed to data services, to which he dedicates great commercial commitment, betting on better levels of quality and lower prices to beat the competition, especially the main operator, Unitel, looking to the market for masses, as for the business segment, whose customers "are not well served".

As for infrastructure sharing, Chrish Lundh admits changes to the initial plan that provided for "a high degree of sharing, as the law provides", but Africell found "unfortunately, another reality".

"We are not able to physically share ('place') our equipment in the towers of other operators, at least here in Luanda, as much as we would like. We have managed to do this partially", explained the manager, adding that the company is build "hundreds of towers in Luanda" because he couldn't do the partition he wanted.

Africell, which already has several hundred workers, hopes to employ up to 2000 people by the middle of next year, between direct and indirect jobs, according to Chris Lundh who declared himself "pleasantly surprised" with the skills found in the national market .

Africell's CEO stressed that the operator is focused on hiring as many women as possible, which has been "challenging", for example in the case of engineering, but still "is going well".

As for the 5G technology, the objective is to be available by the end of the first quarter of 2022, having already ordered the equipment that will allow the service to be made available, aimed at customers with greater purchasing power.

Africell was the winner of the international public tender for the fourth universal mobile communications license in Angola, launched by the Government with the aim of reforming the sector and contributing to the further development of its economy.

The operator has promised a high-speed, data-centric mobile network and sophisticated 'smartphone' phones at affordable prices, as it does in Uganda, Sierra Leone, The Gambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where it has an estimated base of 12 million people. customers.

The group, with US capital but managed from London, promised to invest "several hundred million dollars" in infrastructure and services and estimates that over the next five years 6500 jobs will be created in Angola.