MICC to invest more in Africa

Sierra Leone, Chad, Congo, Ghana, Tanzania and Senegal are the six African countries expected to enjoy from MICC investment initiative in some West African countries.

According to Investor's Business Daily, MICC will spend at least one billion dollars in 2008 in Africa to improve mobile phones services.

Marc Beuls said in a statement to the media that he was optimistic about the initiative to improve mobile services in all the 16 countries in which they are investing.

He said the countries in which they have operations have strong GDP indicators and have steady economic growth.

Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) specialists that HANA spoke with are of the opinion that many developing countries like Sierra Leone, having wireless phone services available in many parts of the country is a key part of modernising economies.

The MICC boss also said that by building a wireless network, the MICC was helping in the creation of economic infrastructure, enables people to communicate, and also helps in the creation of growth in developing markets.

A senior IT analyst pointed out that MICC's strategy to charge users per second, rather than per minute, is a prudent way to make telecommunication less expensive and more affordable.

Abu Sankoh, Millicom's local agent in Sierra Leone told HANA that the company was doing extremely well for its subscribers by giving them quality services.

The MICC Chief Executive said the African continent is very much in favour of this venture of spending much on the cellular network especially this year. He said a lot of newcomers are coming into the market but he said some companies under estimate what it means to operate mobile businesses.

He concluded by saying that one of the challenges of emerging mobile companies is that the bigger ones are now eyeing small developing countries where wireless usage is still low.

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