•MEMBERS of Parliament being shown the national network  by an engineer at the Airtel network centre during a tour of the Airtel infrastructure by the Parliamentary Committee on Transport, Works, Supply and Communications in Lusaka last weekend. Picture by KENNEDY MUPESENI

By KENNEDY MUPESENI –

AIRTEL Zambia is currently spending more than US$48 million to upgrade its network infrastructure across the country.
Airtel Networks director, Abhishek Budhawani said the firm was doing everything possible to improve service delivery.
“We are investing $48 million to upgrade our infrastructure countrywide, the installation of fibre network in Kasama and Ndola to Solwezi is almost complete and that will improve service delivery,” Mr Budhawani said.
He was speaking in an interview after the Parliamentary Committee on Transport, Works, Supply and Communications chaired by Mbabala Member of Parliament Ephraim Belemu toured Airtel infrastructure in Lusaka at the weekend.
Mr Budhawani said the power situation in the country had affected service provision but that the company was investing another $30 million to procure and install generators to improve power supply.
“The power situation in the country has affected operations, because prolonged load-shedding means our generators get over-loaded, which in the process affect network operations. That is why we want to increase power output by installing more generators,” he said.
Earlier, at Airtel Petroda house call centre on Great North Road, a member of the committee, Request Muntanga expressed dissatisfaction with network interruptions.
Mr Muntanga questioned why there were network interruptions and why Zambia was the most expensive country in terms of calling and browsing Internet.
In response, Airtel customer service director Humphrey Chola said that the charges were dependent on a lot of factors.
“There are a lot factors. Some are the cost of imports in terms of technology looking at the currency fluctuations, network deployment, especially in the rural areas where people live, and the type of gadgets customers use to communicate,” Mr Chola said.
He said the cost of transaction was so huge, especially that for Internet because Google was in the United States of America and it cost money to transact.