Zain, British Council tackle global economic crisis

By Anthony Ola

IN the face of the current financial meltdown; small, middle and large business owners and employees alike now seek for strategies, tips and tricks to help weather the storm and emerge ready for the future.

In finding ways to manage the challenges posed by this development, leading telecommunications provider, Zain Nigeria, in collaboration with the British Council, will soon take managers of many businesses, particularly young entrepreneurs, through a financial management programme on "Global economic crisis and its implications to businesses in a developed economy."

The course, which will be a continuation of the Zain/British Council Management Express Skills Development Programme, will be the last in a lecture series initiated in 2008 to help young business owners and other professionals identify and acquire strategies for business growth and personal developments.

Participants of the previous lecture series that was spread across several Nigerian cities have continued to attest to the gains they derived from the programme, especially the last series which provided them with additional skills in retaining customers and growing their businesses.

According to the Head, Corporate Communications of Zain Nigeria, Emeka Oparah, "this edition of Management Express is unique in the sense that an additional city, Enugu, has been included due to high demand, while the scope of the programme has also been extended to accommodate mid-level professionals and decision makers."

He reiterated the company's determination to continuously seek ways of empowering Nigerians towards economic growth and stability as part of its corporate social responsibility.

Also commenting on the dividends of the programme so far, the British Council said it is "steadily building-up a healthy network of businesses, professional individuals and entrepreneurs across Nigeria who will, in the nearest future, be linked with counterparts in the United Kingdom, with its attendant positive implication for business growth."

In another development, Zain has said it is determined to continuously provide its subscribers with a leading edge in telecommunications experience and therefore announced the commencement of high speed mobile services using the 3G network.

The service, which went through rigorous and successful test-run in recent weeks on the Ericsson and Huawei platforms, offers customers access to the internet using any of the following 3G Mobile Data Card with a maximum speed of up to 1.8Mbps, GPRS/EDGE Modem and Data enabled mobile phones.

Speaking on the new service, Emeka Oparah, said the service opens a new horizon for the company's customers to experience the latest innovations in telecoms specially designed to enhance their daily communication, economic and social needs.

He said the introduction of the unique service is timely because it comes at a time when much emphasis has tilted to 'real-time' advance mobility service and is structured to accommodate both mobile and data card users. Oparah said customers can now have a seamless flow of data transfer, including voice, broadband internet and multimedia services over a range of frequencies, with flexibility of usage to both GPRS/EDGE and 3G subscribers.

The service has been categorised to give users the option to choose their usage preference namely; Pay As You Use; Zain Day; Zain Lite; Zain Plus and Zain Max where the difference lies in the total number of bytes, hours of usage and cost.

One of the major advantages of Zain's 3G services is its nation-wide availability, as customers across the length and breadth of the country can conveniently experience the high-wire service real-time, except for video calling which is currently available in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt.