Celtel remains African brand - MTC

Confirming this development, the public relations manager at Celtel Nigeria, Emmanuel Otokhine, said that the MTC Group, which operates mobile telecoms services in 21 countries, including the Middle East and Africa changed its corporate master brand to Zain more than a week ago, and has taken a stand to keep Celtel as its African brand.

According to Otokhine, the news of keeping the Celtel brand on the continent is particularly satisfactory to the Nigerian and Kenyan operations, which less than a year ago rebranded to Celtel.

He noted that Celtel operates currently in over 14 countries, namely Burkina Faso, Chad, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Otokhine pointed out that apart from the master corporate brand, which has been changed to Zain, other MTC Group operations in the Middle East and Sudan have been rebranded as Zain.

The Group's operations in Kuwait and Bahrain, both formerly known as MTC-Vodafone and in Jordan as Fastlink, in Sudan as Mobitel are immediately being re-branded to Zain.

He noted that the group's latest operations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, would become Zain by early 2008, and its Iraqi operation, MTC Atheer, that was recently awarded a 15-year licence extension, will be re-branded to Zain too.

He quoted the group Chief Executive Officer of MTC Dr. Saad Al Barrak, as saying that the rebranding would bring the telco's operations under a single unique identity.

"Zain will bring together all our operations under a single, strong and unique identity. We believe it is the optimal platform upon which we can build a global brand with the ultimate goal of better serving our customers. It will propel the Group towards becoming one of the top ten global mobile telecommunications companies in the next four years," he said.

He explained that the Zain brand and its theme of the new brand, 'A Wonderful World', captures the energy, inspiration and diversity of the group's customers, employees and other stakeholders.

Stressing that the new logo and its colourful identity reflects the group's freshness, boldness and vitality with the 'swirl' of communicating something important to human life, echoing growth, progression and diversity.

The brand name and the company's new logo, he said, were chosen for their simplicity and strong global recognition.

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