Ahead of it's relaunch, rebranded NITEL has made its first call via LTE

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February 26, 2016 10:58 AM

The new milestone (if you want to call it that), follows Ntel's first data call which happened on 18 January, 2016, and its first SIP voice call on 18 February, 2016.

Ntel is the new brand name which NATCOM will go by after it purchased defunct national carrier, NITEL.

Media reports reveal that defunct (now gradually resurrecting) national telecom company, NITEL, which has been acquired by the NATCOM Consortium and trading as Ntel, has made its first Voice over LTE call in Lagos.

According to Innovation Village, the call was made around 3:30pm on Thursday at the company's new Tier III data centre located on Lagos Island.

The company revealed that VoLTE calls are enabled over a carrier's high-speed data network instead of on a traditional voice network.

The reports further show that the VoLTE call was completed in partnership with OEMs Ericsson of Sweden, and SonyElectronics of Japan.

NATCOM says Ntel will go on to work with other mobile operators in Nigeria and international partners to perform cross-network VoLTE calls to ensure that its customers can connect with each other as easily as they can to customers in Nigeria and abroad.

“This is confirmation that the key network elements are now in place to support the full commercial launch of premium integrated voice, video and data services over 4G/LTE.

The Ntel network is built on the 900/1800 Mhz which are the most efficient propagation frequencies for the deployment of 4G/LTE technology," said Kamal Abass, CEO Ntel.

Ntel is looking to launch this year - it will be interesting to see how the telecom industry entrant will hold its own against established players like MTN Nigeria, Airtel, and Globacom.

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