AirtelTigo, a telecommunication service provider, has rebranded as AT.
In an SMS circular to all customers, the company said the following:
Dear Customer, We’re happy to announce to you that AirtelTigo is now AT, so going forward, call us AT. Life is simple!
A top official of the company confirmed to Techfocus24 that “Yes, a press conference will be held at 10am this morning – our name will change to the more simple ‘AT’.”
It would be recalled that Techfocus24 reported that after government purchased the company for US$1 following the exit of Bharti Airtel (Airtel) and Millicom (Tigo) from Ghana in 2021, it has been working on transferring shares to another investor.
Unconfirmed reports say the company is currently being sold to a UK-based private equity firm, Hannam and Partners, which is mainly known for its work in the mining and finance sectors, with no known experience in telecoms.
The company is however said to have drafted Oracle as a partner for the AirtelTigo acquisition deal.
Sources disclosed to Techfocus24 that the AirtelTigo (AT) network is currently being retooled with Oracle’s technology. But a top official of the company said “I can neither confirm nor deny that information.”
Additional information
Government took over AirtelTigo in 2021 for only US$1, when the two telcos which merged to form the company, India’s Bharti Airtel (Airtel) and Sweden Millicom Cellular BV (Tigo) left the country.
Since the merger, the company has still not been doing so well on the market, as it is reportedly heavily indebted to tower companies, particularly ATC Ghana.
Last year, Globacom Ghana, another telco which had also not been doing so well on the market, migrated all of its over 800,000 customers to the AirtelTigo platform. So, now Glo customers have become AirtelTigo customers and the Glo network is now dormant, even though the company still holds its license, at least until July this year.
This also comes at a time when the National Communications Authority (NCA) only recently approved the sale of majority shares in Vodafone Ghana to Telecel Group, after a roller coaster process, in which the NCA initially claimed the the deal did not meet regulatory requirements and Telecel did not have the technical and financial muscles to do the job.