Startime announces plans to expand services in Nigeria

ABUJA, Jan. 8 — Star Times, a digital television partnership between Nigeria and China, has unveiled plans to invest more than 15 billion naira (94 million U.S. dollars) in the sector in its 2013 expansion drive, Joshua Wang, its chief operation officer, has said.

Wang, who made the announcement in Abuja on Tuesday while unveiling the company’s new products and services, said its subscriber base had hit 1 million.

“With the new investment plan, it is expected that the volume of investment would have hit N30bn before the end of the year, having already invested over 15 billion naira within two years of operation in Nigeria,” he added.

According to him, the next phase of the company in its expansion drive was to cover additional 70 cities in 15 states before the end of the year, having already had its presence in 16 major states across the country.

Maxwell Loko, the director of NTA-Star Television Network Ltd, on the impact of the StarTimes investment in the country, said the new expansion plan would generate about 8,000 direct and indirect jobs.

“Since the company began operation in Nigeria about two years ago, we have been able to provide unequal services to Nigerians. Our services are not only cheap; we have been able to demonstrate that Nigerians from all walks of life can have access to digital television,” he said.

“At the present, the company has over 700 Nigerians on its pay roll apart from generations of about 800 indirect jobs,” he said.

The company intends to generate additional 3,000 direct jobs and 5,000 indirect jobs through its new expansion strategies, he said.

......THOMAS WHITTLE/XINHUA