Zambia to invest in telecoms

Zambia telecoms ups spending on mobile, cable
Reuters South Africa - Johannesburg,South Africa
By Shapi Shacinda LUSAKA (Reuters) - Zambia's state telephone utility will spend about $105 million to lay a fibre optic network and to lift its mobile subscription to one million customers by June 2008, its managing director said. Simon Tembo said Cell-Z, a subsidiary of the state-owned Zamtel Ltd., hoped to increase its mobile subscriber base from the current 300,000, and had signed contracts with ZTE China to expand the GSM network, and to improve rural telecommunications. Another Chinese firm Huwaei had been awarded a contract to install a fibre optic network throughout the southern African nation's nine provinces ... "Operators will benefit from high speed backbone network in that it will facilitate cost-effective interconnection between business houses," he said. Zambia's leading mobile telephone firm is Celtel, owned by Kuwaiti-based Zain Group, followed by MTN-Zambia, a unit of South Africa's MTN. Zamtel employs 2,880 workers.