* Company is Ivory Coast’s first domestically-owned operator
* Possesses a network capacity of 3 million users
ABIDJAN, April 19 (Reuters) – New domestically-owned mobile
operator Cafe Mobile has launched services in Ivory Coast,
becoming the West African nation’s sixth operator, the company’s
president said.
Cafe Mobile’s network has a capacity of around 3 million
users, and the company hopes to gain 1 million customers by the
end of year, Ivorian entrepreneur Niamoutie Kouao told a news
conference in the commercial capital Abidjan late on Wednesday.
“We are going to have lots of customers with our policy of
low prices. Our ambition is to have our share of the
market…We’re hoping to be very successful,” he said.
Ivory Coast counts between 15 and 16 million mobile phone
subscriptions compared to just 300,000 existing landlines.
Cafe Mobile, entirely owned by Ivorian investors, joins
France Telecom’s Orange, South Africa’s MTN,
Libya’s Green, Etisalat’s Moov and Koz, owned by
Lebanon-based Comium, already operating in Ivory Coast.
Kouao said the company had paid 20 billion CFA francs
($40.01 million) for its operating licence and currently
possesses working capital of 10 billion CFA.
Cafe Mobile’s operations will initially be limited to the
country’s south but service would gradually expand to the north
with planned investments of 40 billion CFA by the end of the
year, Kouao said.
($1 = 499.8720 CFA francs)
(Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly; Editing by Joe Bavier and
Richard Valdmanis)
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