The Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria's fourth carrier, 9mobile, has stated that the company will need to invest $3billion (about N4.8 trillion) to upgrade its entire network infrastructure to redefine its customers’ end user experience.

He also stated that the push for telecom end user tariff hike will soon be resolved by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) so that operators could plan their business strategies in the new year.

According to him, 9mobile, a product of Etisalat, a United Arab Emirates (UAE) telecom group, had suffered from lack of investment over the last one decade or thereabout, a development that had led to service degradation and loss of subscribers.

Banigbe said a group of investors has stepped in to fund the resuscitation of the telco to reclaim its lost subscribers and play significant roles in the transformation of the country’s digital economy space.

He said the company, under the new management, has mapped out four phases in its recovery march.

Banigbe added that the current investors in the telco are passionate and committed because they believe in the untapped potential of Nigeria’s digital space. He said the opportunities that come with the country’s huge youthful population is enormous, saying “we are still scratching the surface.”

He said customers left the network because of service degradation, a challenge which he promised will be addressed with a combination of infrastructure rollout and collaboration through infrastructure sharing.

He said the idea of operators digging to install fibre cables wasn’t economical, saying about 70 per cent of the cost goes into ‘trenching’ saying if all the operators come together and do it, the 70 per cent cost would have been saved and freed for other infrastructure.

Banigbe said the company will work towards recaptruring its niche market segments comprising the youths, small and medium enterprises (SMEs).