Princeton Telecom Enters Plans For Nigerian Telecom Market

Within the next couple of weeks, Princeton Telecom, an American company will make history as the first American company to operate in the Nigerian telecoms sector writes O’Lekan Babatunde.

Princeton Telecom, an American company with operations in America and Canada is ready to commence business in Nigeria within the next couple of weeks.

Investigation by M2 reveals that the company which received CDMA licence at about last year has bought over a handful of CDMA operations at different stage of operational difficulty.

One of the operations bought over by Princeton Telecom is Topcom CDMA. Topcom was a growing CDMA brand popular in the Festac area of Lagos . The company became inactive soon after its owner died in the infamous Bellview Airline crash.

Also in the East, the new entrant acquired two growing concerns in the industry. These series of acquisition are intended to provide some soft landing for the company to launch into the highly competitive Nigerian telecom market.

Investigations reveal that the company plans to launch into the market simultaneously in four major cities in the country. These cities, M2 findings reveal, include Ibadan , Abuja, Port Harcourt and, of course, Lagos .

Sources close to the business also hinted that the company finds the current industry competitiveness most interesting. However, despite the deluge of players in both the CDMA and the GSM genres, the expected new player is said to claim that there will be no competition considering the level of the service it intends to launch into the market.

The source also reveals that Princeton is bringing state-of-the-art technology that competition will find it difficult, if not impossible, to match. Voice, data and content will be the major pull for the company.

Current M2 findings also point to the fact that the company has also retained the services of Harmonee Concepts, an Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN) registered agency, led by Debo Adedeji. While effort to confirm the presence and the intending launch of Princeton Telecoms from Mr. Adedeji proved abortive, our investigation reveals that the agency ran a vacancy advert for the company early in the year.

An internet search on the company reveals that Princeton Telecom is a voice, data, video & print communications company that provides an array of services for business and residential users by deploying state of the art, rich services to clients and subscribers looking for lower cost and more efficient methods of communication.

“Princeton Telecom seeks to establish an affordable communications network, with a base platform in voice, data, video and print for worldwide accessibility. These services help to connect customer’s home, mobile, work phone and computer workstations to facilitate global communication whether for business or pleasure,” M2 gathered.

The search also reveals a Nigerian, Mr. Dayo Owoseni, on the Board of the 5-man directors of the company.

Mr. Owoseni is the founder and former Chairman and CEO of Systems Automation, a telecom systems developer with systems deployed worldwide for AT&T, Bell Atlantic, Motorola, Siemens, Sprint and Verizon, among others. Mr. Owoseni is also claimed to have developed systems for ABC Television for the satellite systems, The New York and American Stock Exchanges, Toronto Stock Exchange, and the Paris Stock Exchange. At Systems Automation, he also developed the security systems that controlled JFK, Newark, and LaGuardia airports.

Mr. Owoseni, as a Nigerian, industry experts believe, would have studied and convinced his board to invest in the very rewarding Nigerian Telecoms industry.

Once more, the competition is poised to become more intense according to industry watchers. They believe the American company will increase the breath tempo of every operator in the charged industry as it soon inches for some fraction of the “saturated” market. Presently, the market boasts of key operators in both the GSM segment and the CDMA segment, which is more or less diluted. GSM segment has players like MTN, Glo, Zain and Etisalat, while the CDMA segment comprises of companies like Starcoms, Visafone, MultilinksTelkom among others.