Airtel offers Nigerians opportunity to own Nokia Lumia 520 Phone

Leading telecommunications service provider, Airtel Nigeria and Nokia, have partnered to provide Nigerians the opportunity to exchange any of their current handsets for one of Nokia’s swank smartphones, the Lumia 520.

To qualify for the Airtel/Nokia phone upgrade programme, customers need visit any of Airtel shops with their old but functional device of any given brand and network, then pay an exchange fee of N23, 990, to own the Lumia 520. 

Nigeria Phone Rule Toughens Turf Battle for MTN, Airtel

By Emele Onu

Mobile-phone users in Nigeria will be able to change service providers and retain their numbers under new regulations from today, increasing competition between companies including MTN Group Ltd. (MTN) and Bharti Airtel Ltd. (BHARTI)

The new rules are among a series of measures introduced by the regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission, to help increase competition and deliver more benefits to consumers, Reuben Muoka, a spokesman for the NCC, said in a phone interview from Abuja, the capital, on April 19. Rates for calls between different phone companies were set 40 percent lower from April 1.

MTN remains Banned as NCC Lifts Ban on Airtel, Globacom, Etisalat Promos

Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has lifted the ban placed on promotions on Airtel, Globacom and Etisalat networks, Mr. Tony Ojobo, director of Public Affairs, NCC has said. The three service providers reportedly met the regulatory body’s December 2012 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Ojobo told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that the ban placed on promotions on MTN network was still in force.
”The ban on MTN still remains in force until the KPIs are met.
“We expect that the networks will all continue to provide good Quality of Service (QoS),” he said.

The NCC had on Nov. 12, 2012, placed the ban on all promotions by telecom operators as well as lotteries on the GSM networks. Ojobo then said that the ban, which took immediate effect, would remain in force until the commission decided otherwise.

He said the ban was introduced because NCC was inundated with many complaints from consumers and stakeholders against the various promotions offered by the operators.
Ojobo said that the commission carefully evaluated the complaints to sustain the integrity of the networks.

He said that the complaints were also evaluated in the general interest of consumers and socio-economic impact.

Airtel launched HD voice service in Africa

Bharti Airtel in the month of March 2013 launched high quality voice service for its subscribers in Kenya, Rwanda, Malawi and Nigeria in the African sub-continent. 

The benefit of HD voice service is that, customers can talk normally and be heard clearly, without having to raise their voice, even in noisier environments.

Advantages of HD Service
• Mobile HD voice enables high quality voice calls because it reduces the background noise often heard on a regular call. 
• It is based on AMR (Adaptive Multi Rate) wideband technology (W-AMR) which operates with nine different bit rates, providing high quality voice calls. 
• Compared to the current narrow-band speech codec device, the W-AMR speech-compression algorithm doubles voice bandwidth and produces better results.