Airtel Nigeria said its number of customers has hit 20 million. Traffic on the Airtel network grew by 124 percent since the 2010 acquisition by the Bharti Airtel Group. MD Rajan Swaroop said the growth follows an investment of USD 1.2 billion within the period as well as innovations in marketing and the network.Swaroop said Airtel has launched nearly 3,000 3.75G sites with presences in 150 towns and cities across Nigeria. The Airtel 3G network is now the largest one in all of Africa, he said, as the company connects rural communities with broadband services.
Airtel is investing in adding another 2,000 kilometres to its existing 5,000 km grid. Swaroop said the existing network has capacity to take 10 million more subscribers even as the company increases its capacity rapidly. He said this was possible because of investments including a network data centre launched in Lagos in April as well as extra capacity at base stations.