Zambia’s mobile network operator Zamtel has given out over 40 branded bicycles to its distribution partners in the country in an initiative named ‘dealer empowerment’ targeted at strengthening its subscriber base.
Zamtel’s chief executive Mupanga Mwanakatwe said the move for Zambia’s Copperbelt and some parts of North-West Province was a gesture hailed as important to the regions.
“Zamtel intends to do more to equip its valued distributors with tools of trade that would help deliver products close to the doorstep of customers,” he said.
Zambia, once considered to have some of the highest communication tariffs in the southern region, had Zamtel partly privatised in a move viewed as capable of stimulating the communications industry.
Mwanakatwe said the company had made deliberate efforts to strengthen and sustain partnership with all distributors throughout the state.
One of Zamtel’s strategies was to offer distributors with the most basic means of transport like bicycles for mobility and coverage of inaccessible areas within rural areas in provision of Zamtel airtime.
“We have had a universal complain and cry for Zamtel to improve and expand network coverage around the Copperbelt Province,” he stated.
Early this year, the government seized back the telecom that had been sold to a Libyan investor two years ago by the previous government by undoing a deal worth $257 million.
According to Mwanakatwe, Zamtel has an expansion plan in full flight with 18 new cell sites due to be switched on in November.
“I am pleased to inform you that, as part of our network roll-out plan, we shall be rolling out a great number of new cell sites that will enable our network to cover every nook and cranny of the Copperbelt,” he said.
He added that the rollout would be accelerated in the first and second quarter of 2013, while SIM card registration exercise would commence in the last week of October, after the company acquires suitable forms in line with Zambia’s Information and Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA) requirements.
