Brymedia West Africa, one of the firms bidding to take-over Nigeria’s NITEL and MTel is planning to build an overland fiber cable (OFC) from the Nigerian state of Katsina through to Tunisia.
The source said the overland fiber cable would pass through two countries instead of 13 countries. This will be achieved with the aid of tails to be laid into land-locked countries, such as Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali.
Sources close to the project said that Telecom Italia, one of the biggest operators in Europe, has already indicated interest to land the overland fiber cable into mainland Europe.
The sources further disclosed that the proposed cable would outperform existing cables, like the SAT-3, and the upcoming Glo-1. The overland fiber cable is estimated to be half as expensive as SAT-3 or Glo-1, allowing savings to be passed on to customers via lower tariffs. Read the rest of this entry »
The Nigerian government has decided that the country’s GSM network operators will not be allowed to buy the mobile assets of state-owned NITEL when it is eventually privatized. Although the government was originally looking to sell the company as a single entity, the government has now agreed to split the company into its component divisions and sell them separately.
A Federal High Court in Abuja on Thursday refused the request by Transcorp to stop the resale of 51% of NITEL and its mobile arm, M-Tel. Transcorp had initially acquired the shares, but 
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “Nigeria – Telecoms, Mobile, Broadband and Forecasts” report to their offering.
