ISP: Tizeti Clocks 10yrs, Plans IPO, Expansion To Togo, Coted’ Ivoire

Tizeti Nigeria Limited one of the leading internet service providers (ISPs) which at the weekend clocked 10 years of operation in Nigeria, is set to expand its operations to Cote d’ivoire and Togo in addition to mulling listing on the Nigerian bourse.

Presently, with over 2.8 million subscribers on its platform and a revenue of over N11 billion, the firm would be floating the Initial Public Offer (IPO) in the stock market for investors/shareholders while setting eyes on expanding its footprints across the Francophone and Anglophone countries in West Africa.

The founder and chief executive officer, Tizeti Nigeria Limited, Mr. Kandel Anayi said the company has been offering affordable unlimited internet service in Nigeria and Ghana using solar towers which has brought about 30-50 per cent cost savings on data cap plans which has made it undercut its competitors.

He disclosed this at the second edition of Tizeti’s annual event tagged ‘NeXTGEN 2.0: The New Frontier, Africa’s Digital Environment, Transformation and Digital Economy’, which held in Lagos.

He said Tizeti’s vision is to be Africa’s number one provider of voice, video and data. “Using publicly available data on the website of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and our internal data, we are number now one ISP by users and active users in Nigeria.

The co-founder and chief operating officer of Tizeti, Mr. Ifeanyi Okonkwo said Tizeti is launching a new app, new cloud service and take its expansion to Cote d’Ivoire and Togo before the end of the year.
‘’All our towers are solar based with no fuel or diesel use in powering these stations thereby saving the cost of running the sub station and towers as we engage the use of wind turbines to power the solar panels as well,” he said.
The use of internet access in a digital world for educating the children and citizens of a country is seen as a developmental tool that benefits a child for the present digital world while increasing learning opportunities for students.
Vice president marketing, Tizeti, Temitope Osunrinde , said the ISP is building its physical infrastructure for a digital economy leveraging its solar-powered base stations to provide unlimited, cost-efficient, always-on internet access to subscribers.
“We are currently in Oyo, Ogun, Lagos, Edo, and Rivers States and we plan to expand to 10 more states within the next 12 months namely: Delta, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Abia, Anambra, Imo, Enugu, Abuja, Kano and Kaduna. In Ghana, we have covered 80 per cent of Accra and we plan to expand Kumasi and Takoradi.
“We believe that these locations offer the most significant potential demands for broadband expansion and we have looked at their populations, their relative contributions to GDP, the prevalence of higher institutions their and other pool factors.
“By the time we are done, 38 million Nigerians and three million Ghanaians who previously were outside the broadband envelope will now have access to unlimited and reliable broadband connectivity,” he said. Tizeti started in 2012 providing internet service in estates beginning with Lekki. In 2020, its subscribers rose to 1.8 million users as result of the Covid-19.
The indigenous firm which has partnered with investors like YCombinator, Social Capital, WTI, 4DX and Lynett Capital; OEMs like MainOne, Microsoft, Google, Nokia and Meta; payment providers like Paystack, Quickteller, Remita, Aella and Nomba while its bankers include Zenith Bank, Access Bank, Stanbic IBTC and Providus Bank while auditors include PwC.
The CEO of Teesa Education Course, Mr. Osayi Izendonwen commended Tizeti for its vision, milestone and for being a problem solver and employer of labour. He said, ‘’The bane of technological and economic transformation is education and a faster internet increases the learning opportunities for students and encourages shared responsibility between parents and educators to solve their courses’’.
The advantage of having a high-speed internet service that can connect with apps to help education tools. Connecting schools, connecting people and evolving education into a digitalizing educational one, technology plays a level playing field for the African child.