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Interview:
Corporate Nigeria (CN) talks to
Mr. Steve Evans
CEO
Etisalat Nigeria
Quality Service and Innovations
CN: Before becoming CEO of Etisalat Nigeria you amassed a wealth of experience starting up and developing large mobile operations in diverse environments. Can you give some details of your career to date?
Mr Steve Evans: I have been in the mobile business since 1989 which is quite a long time. Mobile is a fairly young business and sometimes we forget that we didn’t use to have mobile phones. When I came into the market in 1989, there were only seven million mobile subscribers worldwide. In my first role as marketing manager for a company called One-to-One in the UK, the big question we had was whether it is going to be possible to make mobile phones attractive to the mass market. We didn’t know the answer to that question because we were operating in a world where it was only the top businessmen that has mobile phones. Everybody was wondering could it be a mass market product.
So I have spent quite a bit of time around the world in different places. I spent 10 years with Cable Wireless, in their mobile division during which time I started up a big start up in Australia called Optic Mobiles where I spent three years. I spent four years in France starting up as the Deputy Chief Executive of a business called Buick Telecom. I also spent two years with One-to-One in the UK which was the first mobile operator there and I was the Deputy Managing Director and negotiated the Virgin Mobile joint venture between One-to-One and Virgin.
I haven’t been in Africa before this particular role which I took on in 2008. So certainly that provides a lot of intellectual stimulation. I’m enjoying myself here. I do bring, I guess, a lot of experience of starting up large operations and a very open mind from the cultural perspective as to what we need to adopt as a winning strategy in Nigeria, which is the largest market in Africa.
What services does Etisalat Nigeria offer businesses and private customers in Nigeria?
We launched in October 2008 and took a decision very early on that we would not launch services to the high valued post paid segment of businesses until we had rolled out coverage to a certain critical mass of coverage. In 2009 we launched our services to post paid customers and to the business market. Those services are basically a bundle of services-the normal mobile telephony services, blackberry, data services which we are offering to our customers. You need to bear in mind that in Nigeria 97 to 98 per cent of subscribers are pre-paid as opposed to post-paid. However, the post paid customers are disproportionate valuable and therefore important.
Etisalat acquired its operating licence from the Nigerian Government in January 2007 and officially launched its network in March 2008. How has Etisalat established itself in the market since then?
In March 2008, we basically made some calls on the network to establish that we had already made investment that is capable of piloting the network and that was a requirement of our license. We didn’t formally launch until October 2008 and at that time we launched in seven major cities including Lagos, Kano, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan and Kaduna. We just launched with those isolated large cities at that stage offering the pre-paid service. Subsequently, we’ve been busy rolling out across Nigeria and now we have a coverage which is of the order of 30 per cent of population coverage and we intend to extend that coverage further.
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