Burundi:
Mobile phone subscriptions leap 17%
(Reuters) - Increasing competition between Burundi's mobile phone operators helped to boost the number of subscriptions in the country by 17 percent last year, telecoms regulator ARCT said on Wednesday.
Mobile phone subscriptions in the central African country rose to 2.24 million in 2012 as competition between the five operators reduced prices.
Constaque Hakizimana, who is in charge of mobile networks at ARCT, said the cell phone had become a basic need for many, thanks in part to cheap internet browsing and additional services such as money transfers.
The coffee-producing nation of more than 8 million people had only 270,000 mobile phone users in 2007.
Hakizimana said that subscriber numbers are expected to keep growing but he did not provide a specific forecast.
U-com, owned by Egypt's Orascom, controls 64 percent of the Burundi market. The other operators are Econet, a subsidiary of Econet Wireless, Lacell SU from Nepal, Africell, owned by VTL Holdings of Dubai, and state-owned ONAMOB. (Reporting by Patrick Nduwimana; Editing by Duncan Miriri and David Goodman)
Mobile phone subscriptions leap 17%
(Reuters) - Increasing competition between Burundi's mobile phone operators helped to boost the number of subscriptions in the country by 17 percent last year, telecoms regulator ARCT said on Wednesday.
Mobile phone subscriptions in the central African country rose to 2.24 million in 2012 as competition between the five operators reduced prices.
Constaque Hakizimana, who is in charge of mobile networks at ARCT, said the cell phone had become a basic need for many, thanks in part to cheap internet browsing and additional services such as money transfers.
The coffee-producing nation of more than 8 million people had only 270,000 mobile phone users in 2007.
Hakizimana said that subscriber numbers are expected to keep growing but he did not provide a specific forecast.
U-com, owned by Egypt's Orascom, controls 64 percent of the Burundi market. The other operators are Econet, a subsidiary of Econet Wireless, Lacell SU from Nepal, Africell, owned by VTL Holdings of Dubai, and state-owned ONAMOB. (Reporting by Patrick Nduwimana; Editing by Duncan Miriri and David Goodman)
Source: Reuters.Com
