October 19, 2017 By Alusine Sesay
Sekou Drame,CEO Orange Sierra Leone
While addressing the media yesterday during the official launch of Orange Sierra Leone at Lagunda Complex, Chief Executive Officer of the telecom company in the country noted that: “The launch of the Orange brand comes with a promise to meet the needs of customers with innovative, affordable and relevant solutions giving them the freedom to do what they choose and providing them with the tools to meet life’s daily challenges.”
Sekou Drame promised that they would bring the ‘best’ data services to enterprises and financial services that have been developed by the Orange Group and implemented around the world.
“We have already proven recently that we can be innovative in the market and bring value to our customers when we were the first one in August to launch Boku Boku Browsing, our new data portfolio at reduced prices,” he said.
“The launch of Orange in Sierra Leone is also an opportunity to rename our mobile money activity that has been in existence for 5 years. Orange Money will bring to the people of Sierra Leone a service which will be as reliable and convenient as Airtel Money but with improved quality, better customer experience ,more security to customer transactions.”
Orange and Sonatel acquired Airtel Sierra Leone on the 19th of July, 2016, and according to the CEO, they have been working very hard to deliver the company’s promise which is to provide to every customer an unmatched experience.
“Thanks to the support of our shareholders Sonatel and Orange, we have invested since the acquisition of the company 33 million USD to improve the network that we acquired. We have launched a modernization plan to completely change the network and make it much more reliable with better quality for voice and data service,” he said.
“We have also launched an expansion plan to improve the coverage of our services. As of today, we have already built 30 new sites all around the country with 132 new localities connected and thousands of Sierra Leoneans accessing for the first time telecommunication services.”
The CEO further promised that they would continue to build a network to international standards and expand “our services into untapped and underserved areas as long as the regulatory and fiscal framework allows us to maintain a high level of investment.
Sekou Drame said Orange is committed to promoting transparent processes and transparent communication for the benefit of their customers across the country.
“We are launching today per second billing for all local calls, meaning that if you call for one second, you are billed for one second and not more,” he said.
He said they would continue to build on “Our strong corporate social responsibility presence and give back to the communities where we operate leveraging on our four pillars including health, education, community development and environment.
Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Operations in Africa in charge of Operations in Africa and the Middle East,Bruno Metting, hammered home the need for a business friendly atmosphere, wherein the telecoms regulatory body ,National Telecommunications Company(NATCOM),would not only focus on penalties but help the industry to improve on their services through innovative means.