Celtel Wants a Borderless African Cell Phone Network

Celtel International is perhaps the top cell phone network in Africa. It is operating in 15 African countries now and is an impressive success story from the continent of Africa. It recently launched the One Network service in East African countries (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda). Under this service, a user will be able to use his/her cell phone service anywhere in these 3 countries without changing anything. I mean they will not need to use roaming service or take a new sim card or pay any extra fee for receiving phone calls from another country. Celtel International has claimed that it is the ‘the first ever borderless mobile network in the world.’ It wrote in the press release:

From today, all Celtel’s East African customers, both prepaid and postpaid, will be able to use this service. They can make calls at local rates, receive incoming calls free of charge and top-up their pre-paid phones with locally-bought airtime cards. Alternatively, Celtel’s prepaid customers may top up their accounts with airtime cards they have brought from their home networks, whether in Kenya, Tanzania or Uganda. The One Network service is automatically activated upon crossing the geographic border into another of the three countries, with no prior registration required or sign-up fee charged.

In addition, Celtel’s postpaid customers who previously only had access to national calling will be able to place calls across all three East African countries, without restriction.

I must admit that it is a cool thing to do and I am surprised but happy this was implemented by an African country. Now, Celtel International wants to build same kind of network in sub-Saharan Africa. Gradually, it wants to implement this idea to the entire continent of Africa. I cannot wait to see that happen. I hope that Asian countries can learn from it and try for a similar network.