”Borderless” Mobile Network Conquers Africa
The world’s first ‘borderless’ mobile network, Celtel’s One Network, now covers a dozen African countries. In November, Burkina Faso, Chad, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan joined.
The network covers an area more than twice the size of Europe and can serve a potential market of 400 million customers.Celtel customers can move freely across geographic borders, make calls, send text messages at local rates, and receive incoming calls free of charge. They can charge their prepaid phones with locally bought airtime cards, available at more than 500,000 points of sale. The One Network service is automatically activated upon crossing into any one of the other countries, with no prior registration required or sign-up fee charged.
Since September 2006, Celtel customers in the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda already used the roaming services across their country borders.
Celtel claims that 400 million people – almost half the African population – can make calls at local rates. Since its launch, more than two million people have used the service. “Celtel has, in effect, created a unified market of the kind that regulators can only dream about in Europe”, London-based magazine the Economist wrote.
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Source: Developingtelecoms.com, Celtel
