Sudatel plan to double Senegalese market share

Sudan-based telecoms group Sudatel announced last Friday that it hopes to double its market share in Senegal this year and has plans to cut prices and introduce new services at its Expresso unit to achieve this. The Senegalese mobile sector is currently dominated by Sonatel’s Orange brand, with two-thirds of the market, followed by Millicom International Cellular’s (MIC’s) Tigo unit. Expresso Senegal chief executive officer El Amir Ahmed El Amir told reporters ‘Our market share in mobile is now 5% but is planned to be 12% very soon.’ The smaller operator has announced an immediate 7% reduction in pre-paid voice tariffs and a migration from its existing CDMA-based platform to the GSM standard. Expresso hopes to use the more widely available GSM technology to bring in new services such as mobile internet, TV and video-on-demand (VoD). Existing Expresso CDMA users will be able to migrate to the new GSM services and keep the same number, officials have said.