Intercellular Nigeria

active

Intercellular was one of the eight companies to receive a basic local service license from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in 1995. The license allowed the company to provide its phone services through Wireless Local Loop (WLL) technology. Intercellular was a wholly owned Nigerian company. The company was the second private WLL provider to start commercial operations beginning in February 1998. Intercellular started offering services after two years due to factors such as bureaucracy, slow spectrum allocation, and the need to raise financing hampered network deployment. The company had planned to expand capacity to 50,000 lines. Intercellular also received a US$13.5 million supplier credit from Motorola in 1999. The main coverage area of Intercellular was Lagos, the capital city, by 1998. Intercellular competed with state-owned Nitel, and the private operator Multilinks by July 1998. In September 2000, Intercellular Nigeria awarded a US$21 million contract to Motorola for the supply and deployment of a CDMA fixed wireless local loop (WLL) network expansion. The 800 MHZ system was to be expanded for up to 45,000 limited mobility subscribers. In July 2003, Motorola’s Global Telecom Solutions Sector (GTSS) was awarded a contract worth an estimated US$12 million to expand the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) fixed wireless local loop (WiLL) network for Intercellular Nigeria Ltd. The expanded system capacity and coverage were to be deployed in the cities of Abuja and Lagos. The system was to be deployed in Lagos also included CDMA2000 1X capability, Motorola’s first 3G network in Africa. With this expansion, Intercellular Nigeria was to be able to add up to 75,000 additional limited mobility subscribers to its network. The launch of its CDMA 2000 1X network occured in August 2005 in the city of Lagos. In January 2005, Harris Corporation of the US announced that it had been selected by Intercellular to provide microwave radio links for a multi-million dollar network expansion. By end 2005, Intercellular had about 200,000 fixed-wireless lines in Nigeria and was planning an initial public offering (IPO) to raise 4.5 billion naira (US$34 million) from the Lagos stock exchange to fund further expansion. In December 2007, Sudatel bought 70% stake of Intercellular for US$10 million. None None