The coming together of like minds produces better results, and Nigeria CommunicationsWeek investigations showed that the prevailing factors for the first 4G/LTE managed services contract signed in Sub-Saharan Africa between Smile Communications Nigeria Limited and Ericsson Corporation about a week ago.
The contract is in line with Smile Communications’ plan to outsource its network managed services and concentrate on rolling-out services to other cities across the country.
Accordingly, Smile Communications relying on its 800GHz spectrum has scheduled to roll-out services in three States in the third quarter of 2015, thereby requiring the expertise Ericsson represents to ensure unrivaled quality of service provisioning.
Smile presently in Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja and Port Harcourt is itching to launch 4G/LTE services in Benin, Kaduna and Enugu between August and October 2015.
Still on the purpose of the Smile/Ericsson contract agreement, Mrs. Alero Ladipo, chief marketing officer (CMO) of Smile Communications Nigeria Limited told Nigeria Communications in Lagos, that the Company is forward thinking in its approach to market penetration.
According to her, the Smile Communications has penchant interest in offering the customers the best quality of service.
Ladipo said, “Smile Communications is putting things together for the future. Our drives are geared towards, first of all, presenting good products to our customers. The Ericsson partnership is about good partnership. Initially, everyone was skeptical; you started well, will you finish well.
“The whole idea now is that Smile and Ericsson partnership is about continuously doing well and wherever there is an end it will continuously be good. So, that is key to: service perfection, product superiority and we are trying to maintain that. We are making people to understand that the use of data comes in the reach of everybody. And nobody should feel they cannot use data for whatever thing they want to do.
Now, data is being used in education, health, medicine, agriculture, et cetera., in fact no sector has not been impacted by data availability. We are also leading telemedicine approach in Nigeria through our partnership with First Consultant Medical Centre, Lagos; where you sit at home and say, ‘Doctor, my head is aching me’ and he pulls-up files and say maybe this and that are the issues. At that point, you need not to take a trip all the way to the doctor’s office”.
She added that the contract was part of the Company’s drives to moving Nigerians and the country forward.
Also speaking to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, Mr. Tobe Okigbo, chief corporate services officer for Smile Communications Nigeria Limited, reiterated that the managed services contract, essentially means that each of the partners concentrate on their areas of expertise.
“Ericsson is an expert in the areas of developing a network. Therefore, Ericsson takes care of the network, Smile takes care of making sure that the services get to the people. It is symbiotic relationship that both will benefit from.
“Now, think about this: Smile’s spectrum is 800 and the LTE, currently, is the only genuine LTE in Nigeria. People are claiming they offer LTE; on 2.3MHz or 3.4MHz spectrum? Ours is on 800MHz, an innovative spectrum. So, the Smile Communications and Ericsson partnership means the coming together of the best to offer consumers the best. The brand promise at Smile is to offer the best and we are consistently pursuing the promise,” Okigbo said.