Starcomms goes South-East, eyes N12.7bn facility

UNIFIED Licensed Operator (ULO) Starcomms Limited, has advanced plans to roll out services in the cities within the South Eastern states of the country, even as it’s eyeing $100 million (about N12,732,500,000 billion) facility

These cities include Onitsha in Anambra State, Asaba in Delta State and Aba in Abia State.

This is coming as the telco said that its latest numbering plan 07028 has already attracted over 25,000 subscribers.

Chief executive, Starcomms Limited, Mr. Maher Qubain disclosed this in a media parley in Lagos and said that as he speak, the telco is test-running its operations in the aforementioned cities in addition to the federal capital territory (FCT) Abuja.

Mr. Qubain said that Starcomms plan is to roll out in the next few weeks in these cities in South Eastern states, which means that before the end of April the service would be launched commercially.

He also said that before the end of next quarter, Starcomms intends to roll out in the Benin City in Edo State, Kaduna and Calabar.

Starcomms, which currently has coverage presence in Lagos, Port Harcourt and Maiduguri, he said, has began construction of its network plans in the city of Zaria in Kaduna State, which would be ready by mid-year to offer voice, fax among other services.

“We intend to revolutionise the way Nigerians live, work and play through our services,” he declared.

“Today, we have recorded 25,000 on 07028 and it would be launched officially in few weeks time,” Mr. Qubain said.

He informed that the Abuja network is a Next Generation Network (NGN) and the first of its kind that has been structured to offer along video alongside the Evolution Data Optimised (EV-DO), which the telco plans to release by June.

Mr. Qubain further said that Starcomms in readiness of increasing market competition, has built a new 200-seater customer care call centre that is supported with Short Messaging Service (SMS).

Also speaking, the Commercial Director at Starcomms, Mr. Prakash Pantham, said that in the last two years the telco has been consistent in growing its subscriber-base and this year would be doubled.

“We double our subs and this year want to double what we had last year,” he said.

Mr. Pantham added that Starcomms has deployed a module in its marketing alongside the dealers which boost its subscriber-base on weekly to the tune between 500 and 600 subscribers.

“This method has been going on in the last two years,” he said.

According to him, Starcomms has been preparing for the roll-out of its unified access licnese over the last three years.

“We planned for this for over three years because we realized that this day will come and now that we’re set, we’re excited to pull this through,” he declared.

Mr. Pantham explained that the unified license affords Starcomms a wide range of options consisting of fixed wireless, fax, data, mobile telephony, long distance, national, international mobile and high speed internet services to name a few.

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