Rural Mobile Network Expand to New Villages in Tanzania District
A rural mobile network, built by
AMOTEL and the World Telecom Labs (WTL), is now active in 3 remote Tanzanian
villages in the Mwanga District of the Kilimanjaro region. The announcement was
made during the GSMA Mobile 360 Africa conference on July 26th 2016. None of
these villages have ever been covered by any kind of telephone network before.
Each village has a minimum of 1,500 people with Average Revenue per User (ARPU)
of around USD2.5. AMOTEL installed the Village Voice and Data (Vivada) system
of WTL in each village. The system provides both GSM and wifi networks. Each
network has a radius of 12km to cover people living outside the village
centers. Local engineers have been trained to manage the networks. A cyber café
and calling cabin have also been built in each village, while residents were
encouraged to adopt mobile money and other transformative applications. Robert
Mabele, Board Chairman of AMOTEL, said “This is a major milestone both for
AMOTEL and for Tanzanians in rural areas who want to be able to use their
phones, tablets and computers in the same way as people living in more urban
areas.” AMOTEL’s networks were financed by the Universal Communications Service
Access Fund (UCSAF) as part of its USD9.6m investment to improve connectivity
in Tanzania. Following the success of these networks, AMOTEL hopes to connect
another 50 villages over the next 6 months and 500 within 2 years. It is now
looking for additional investment to fund these networks. AMOTEL Tanzania The
Mkulima African Telecommunication Company (MTC), operating under the brand name
AMOTEL is the first Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) in Tanzania. The company’s
goal is to provide excellent and affordable telecommunication services to
low-income communities in rural and urban areas. AMOTEL was established in 2015
with a mission to embrace new innovations and developments to serve low ARPU
rural areas with little or no infrastructure. The company estimates that the
current mobile subscriber base is only 28m out of Tanzania’s total population
of 50m.
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