Viettel Tanzania, which operates under the brand name Halotel, is investing USD100 million to expand wireless network coverage and improve the quality of its services this year, in order to meet growing consumer demand for mobile data. Local newspaper The Citizen quotes the firm’s Deputy Managing Director, Le Van Dai, as saying that Viettel will roll out a further 1,000 base transceiver stations (BTS) throughout the country by the end of 2017. ‘With this latest development, Halotel is set to be ahead of other telecommunications companies in Tanzania, since we already cover up to 97% of the population with our mobile services,’ he said, adding that the cellco plans to lower the cost of data bundles to further drive subscriber take-up.
According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, Vietnamese military-owned telecoms firm Viettel Group was awarded a licence to build and operate a mobile network in Tanzania in October 2014. Commercial 2G and 3G services were introduced twelve months later over a network covering all 26 provinces and around 81% of the population at launch.