NITEL

Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, or NITEL, is the principal telecommunications company in Nigeria, and was owned by the government of Nigeria until it was sold to Mtel by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE). The mobile telecommunications arm of Nitel is responsible for all wired telecommunications in Nigeria.

In February 2008 a report by BBC News said that the Nigerian government assumed the transnational corporation did not improve performance of NITEL and therefore stopped privatization in favour of Transcorp.

Nigerians have reportedly been frustrated by Nitel's failure to provide wireless services comparable with those found in other countries. They are not too optimistic that the present Nigerian Government can do this despite the president's promise of improved services by 2009. Looking from 1958 to the arrival of Global Satellite system communication (GSM) in Nigeria; NITEL was able to provide 450,000 subscriber lines for a population of 120 million.^[1]

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