African telecommunications operator Moov, controlled by Emirates Telecommunications Corp (Etisalat), launched the first nationwide cellphone coverage in Côte d’Ivoire on Tuesday using Thuraya satellite phone technology.
Moov said its Moovsatellite service would allow traders and businesspeople to operate more easily in remote areas of the world’s biggest cocoa producer where there was no GSM cell-phone network.
Moov, a unit of Africa-focused Atlantique Telecom that is more than 80% owned by Etisalat, is currently Côte d’Ivoire’s third-largest cellphone operator with about 1,5-million customers.
Etisalat is also a major shareholder in Thuraya. It is the first time that such a service has been offered in sub-Saharan Africa, outside South Africa, company officials said.
They expressed hope the expanded coverage of the satellite service would help boost Moov to the number one spot in Côte d’Ivoire, overtaking France Telecom unit Orange.
”All the cocoa buyers will be able to talk with their employees in the bush. That will mean a revolution in the work of many businesses,” Cisse Ahmed, director-general of Moov, told a news conference to launch the new service.
Mamadou Kone, a cocoa farmer and cooperative official in the isolated western region of Duekoue, said he had already ordered one of the new phones.
”There are huge communications problems here. The network is not stable … I need to be in constant contact with our partners in Abidjan from the bush,” he said.
Moov executives said the price of a call on the satellite service would be around 190 CFA francs a minute to the Moov network and 290 francs a minute to another domestic network.
Satellite phone calls would typically cost 1 000 CFA francs a minute, they said.
Atlantique Telecom has operations in seven African countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Central Africa, Gabon, Niger and Togo. – Reuters