Buchanan, Grand Bassa County – Hundreds of citizens, county officials, dignitaries and local and international guests joined the Orange Liberia team to launch its new 4G LTE sites in Buchanan Grand Bassa County on Tuesday, March 13th.
Buchanan is one of the ten cities that the telecommunications giant has launched outside of Monrovia since May 2017.
Making keynote remarks at the event, the CEO of Orange Liberia Mr. Mamadou Coulibaly said that the launching of 4G LTE in Buchanan was part of a long term strategy of Orange, which had been announced by OMEA CEO Mr. Bruno Mettling during the branding of Orange in Liberia in 2017.
Mr. Mamadou Coulibaly declared that Orange Liberia will continue to implement an unprecedented network expansion across rural Liberia despite infrastructural challenges.
Mr. Coulibaly revealed that Orange has invested more than 40 million United States dollars infrastructure and network expansion in Liberia since 2016 and referred to it as “the largest investment in the Liberian telecommunications sector in recent times.”
The Orange network expansion focuses heavily reaching vast parts of rural Liberia which does not have access to telecommunications network.
In addition, the company (which was the first to launch 4G LTE sites outside of Monrovia) is making strides to ensure that every county will have access to high speed internet in the near future.
As Orange has already rolled out its high speed internet network to ten cities outside of Monrovia, it is setting the company apart as the largest provider of high speed internet in Liberia.
Mr. Coulibably: “Because we are a company that does what it says, since June 2017 we successively opened new 4G LTE networks in Gbarnga, Kakata, Cuttington, Buchanan, Ganta , Voinjama, Foya, and Harper, Zwedru and Yekepa.”
The expansion mark a 43% increase in overall network sites since Orange acquired Cellcom two years ago.
Mr. Coulibaly concluded that in the next three years the company would invest in building another 100 sites across the country.
“We are doing this because we believe in the Liberian people and we have a vision that the innovative programs and services we are rolling out including mobile money will have a significant impact on jumpstarting certain parts of the economy,” said Coulibaly.
“Liberians have already experienced some of our great innovations in 2017 and I can safely say that the best is yet to come.”
Speaking on behalf of the people of Grand Bassa County Senators, Hon. Jonathan Lambort Kaipay and Hon. Yonble Karngar-Lawrence both congratulated and thanked Orange for continuing to remain what they referred to as a ‘critical partner in progress to the Bassa people.’
Hon Kaipay recalled “Orange has constructed at least five 4G LTE since my ascendency as Senator.”
“We want to thank Orange for partnering with us to ensure the voices of our people are heard. Connecting our people is a key priority to us as connectivity is often the first step to business development.”
He maintained that the engagement of Orange would help the county reach higher heights admonishing the Management of Orange to remain with us, be with us, so that together, we can make Grand Bassa County a model county.”
