e.Sream Unveils 5 Year Expansion Strategy

By Emma Okonji

e. Stream Networks Limited, one of the country’s  indigenous licensed broadband communications  providers has announce its decade of operation in the country’s telecommunications sector.
The Managing Director of the company, Mr. Muyiwa Razaq Ogungboye, who announced the development at a press briefing held at the company’s corporate head office in Lagos, also said the company had commenced a five-year expansion plan, aimed at providing better quality services to its existing and prospective clients, as well as boosting the sector’s productivity.
Ogungboye said: “We came up with a five year business plan in November 2015, which would run through 2016 to 2020. We are going to execute our business plans by investing both by collocation and by our individual strength.
“In our plan, we are going to take up Lagos projects for the year 2016, and by 2017, we would take up projects in Abuja and Port Harcourt, while others will come up in subsequent years within the five year period.”
“As part of our plans, we want to set up more base stations and more cloud services with Microsoft and Del, among other plans.
For the five year plan, we have a budget of $1.2 million dollars for executing our plans 2016 project alone,” Ogungboye said.
The e.Stream boss, who disclosed that his company spent about N20 million to set up a base station in the country, also noted that “aside from Wi-Fi, LTE can also work on mobile phones, but the government needs to encourage such innovation. “
He noted that the company has planned to embark on coverage services for the year 2016 while value added services would be the company’s target for 2017.
“We are looking forward to including IPTV business as well. Presently, we have a Kenyan proposed partner company, which came on a visit to us in Nigeria recently, and we are also expected to pay the company a visit soon.
“We are also collaborating with Bitflux, and our partnership is aimed at proffering better solutions to problems in the sector,” he added.
Ogungboye, among other business challenges in the industry, listed a number of poor infrastructures, including epileptic power supply in the country, inability to access adequate funds to execute targeted projects.
He said, “We need support from the government and the financial sector to attain the 5G connectivity by 2020. There is need for the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to put up modalities to make the 5G connectivity a reality.
One single corporate entity cannot do it all alone. And also, the government should give more credence to indigenous players in the industry.”
Having commenced operation in May 2006 as a quality certified company dedicated to providing suitable connectivity solutions for business, Ogungboye said e.Sream will on May 20, mark its 20th anniversary with memorable activities.
This, according to the MD, is coming on the heels of the company’s ten years of thriving in the industry.
As part of measures to commemorate its tenth anniversary, the company  is set to aide some government owned secondary schools with their needed amenities such as classroom chairs, tables, among others.
The company would also award some icons who have made landmarks in the country’s telecoms industry.
This, according to Ogungboye, is a way of giving back to the society what the company had received from the society.