Mozambique's third mobile operator to go live in January

Mozambique's third mobile phone operator Movitel has started rolling out infrastructure and plans to launch operations in January next year, an executive said Thursday.The company is "installing fiber-optic cables and antennas to cover 95% of the country's 128 districts," technical director Huynh Quang Nghia, told private broadcaster STV.

Movitel is a joint venture between Viettel Group, a unit of Vietnam Military Telecommunications Corp. and SPI - Gestao e Investimentos, the investment arm of Mozambique's ruling party and a group of investors known as Invespark.

The company is planning to invest $465 million over the next five years to build its own infrastructure, but will share equipment in some regions. The consortium was awarded a license in November 2010, joining the state-run mCel and South Africa's Vodacom Group Ltd., which is owned by Vodafone Group PLC.

"By next January, the country will have a third mobile operator in operation," Nghia said, adding that "our coverage will be 95%, but in two to three months' time we will have 100% coverage of all 128 districts." Data released in March last year showed that there were 7 million mobile phone subscribers in Mozambique, in a population of 22.1 million people.

The arrival of Movitel is expected to increase competition, with mCel currently enjoying the biggest subscriber base of nearly 4 million users and 3 million for Vodacom.

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