Mobile Service Provider, Airtel has hinted of plans to invest over 200 million Ghana cedis this year to improve the quality of its network services.

The company in the latest NCA report for January 2014 gained over 113 thousand new mobile-voice subscribers and almost 50 thousand new data subscribers to grow its market share to 12.35 % and 15.83% respectively.  The company says it intends deploying a lot more 3G cell sites and also boost its fibre network this year to improve the speed and reliability of its internet services.

The Chief Executive, Philip Sowah tells JOY BUSINESS, this should position the company as the most-preferred internet service provider in the country.

“We really want to be the internet company of choice in Ghana. So this investment will significantly improve the customer experience. We're deploying customer experience management tools in the network. So what we're doing is increasing the number of cell sites by almost an additional 40%. We'll be doing a lot of in-cells because you realise that when you are on 2G the signal is good and strong but might be weaker on 3G. So what we're doing now is deploying additional cell cites, first in areas of coverage to increase the densification so that we can get higher throughputs within areas we have 3G coverage and then in addition we're going to start new deployments over and above that” he said.

He further explained that the investment in data services should invariably go to improve the quality of voice services.  “We'll do some voice investments but what is happening is that some of the infrastructure we already have is carrying voice and data. So as we put more 3G infrastructure in place then we can release some of the cell sites to take more voice traffic while the data moves to 3G cell sites. So in effect voice gets a benefit and data gets a benefit” he concluded.