One of Nigeria’s telecoms operators, Airtel Networks Limited, said it had invested over $600m (about N93 billion) in the course of the year to expand network capacity in pursuit of what it referred to as  “world-class quality of service (QoS).”

Announcing this after a media tour of the company’s Lekki-Lagos Green Site, Airtel’s Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Deepak Srivastava, recalled that the company had announced a landmark deal with Ericsson to upgrade 250 diesel-powered stations in Nigeria to Green sites, an initiative designed to enable the company harness solar energy to operate its base stations.

He said the Green Sites would contribute to a considerable reduction of carbondioxide emissions and prevent network outages associated with inconsistent power supply.

Srivastava regretted that non-availability of regular grid power supply to sites across the country is responsible for over 70 per cent of down time resulting in poor quality of service, adding that the Green-Site would go a long way in addressing this critical challenge.

According to him, Airtel would partner the World Bank to address the nagging issue of power supply, especially in remote communities.

“Even as we pursue the Green-Site solution”, he revealed, “Airtel has, in the last six months, installed dual generating sets in 200 sites and installed high backup batteries in 600 sites, while noting that an additional high-capacity backup batteries and 500 new generating sets are to be deployed by March 2012”.

He lamented that, in some other countries, operators are concerned with managing customer experience rather than keeping the sites up as is the case in Nigeria, where power outages, fibre cut and community issues have combined to undermine the integrity of the network quality.