Rwandatel now switches to GSM

LAP Green has promised to invest $317 million over a 15 years to revamp Rwanda’s telecom industry.

According to Eric Kariningufu, Rwandatel’s director of CDMA, with the newly introduced GSM, subscribers will be required to purchase sim cards like all other GSM carriers and enjoy the liberties that come with sim card technology.

Sim card allows phones to be instantly activated, interchanged, swapped and upgraded, all without carrier intervention.

“The sim itself is tied to the network, rather than the actual phone. Phones that are card-enabled can be used with any GSM carrier,” he said. However, Rwandatel officials said the company intends to retain at least 150,000 of its CDMA subscribers. “With the advent of cellular phones doing double and triple duty as streaming video devices, podcast receivers and e-mail devices, speed is important to those who use the phone for more than making calls.

“CDMA has been traditionally faster than GSM, though both technologies continue to rapidly leapfrog along this path,” said Abdulbaset Elassabi, Rwandatel’s board chairman.

MTN Rwanda, which is partially owned by the Johannesburg-based MTN Group, over a month ago registered its one millionth subscriber.

The company, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this week, had monopolised the Rwandan telecom market with over 90 per cent of its share.

During the launch of Rwandatel’s GSM, chief executive officer Patrick Kariningufu said the company is set to increase its subscribers from the current 50,000 to about 600,000 by the end of 2009.

“We have introduced a ‘per-second billing’ system and a prepaid offer, which includes spending only 1,000 Rfw ($1.8) for a sim card. Rwandatel has also set the sms price at 20 Rfw for each sms, the lowest price in the country,” said Mr Kariningufu.

The firm also introduced a handset that goes for Rfw 19,000 ($34).

The phone offers videoconferencing, downloading music and video files as well as enabling one to watch TV,” Mr Kariningufu said.

Rwandatel, a formerly state-owned company founded in 1993, had in 2005 been privatised to Terracom Communications, an American IT provider at $20 million or 99 per cent stake.

In 2007, however, the government of Rwanda bought back Rwandatel from Terracom Communications and sold it to LAP Green Networks.