NEW CANAAN, Conn. — Only about one in every 100 people in Africa has a telephone, but that hasn't stopped one Connecticut company from finding big success in selling cellular systems there.
While many U.S. phone companies have focused in recent years on Asia and South America as growing cellular areas, Telecel International Ltd. quietly tapped the cellular market in Africa over the last 10 years.
It now operates systems in five African nations and plans to expand to four more within the next year.
"The existing [land-line] phone system was very bad, so they needed something else," said Telecel President Miko Rwayitare, a native of Zaire who helped found the company in 1985. "The demand can be supported by cellular."
Telecel first introduced cellular service in Africa in 1986, when it gave the government of Zaire a free pilot system for one year.
"By then, they were so used to communicating with it, they didn't want to dispense with it," Telecel Chairman Joseph F. Gatt said.
Eventually, the company expanded its wireless systems from Zaire into Burundi, Madagascar, Guinea and the Central African Republic.
Telecel's sales have skyrocketed over the last five years, jumping from $5.1 million in 1990 to $54.1 million in 1995. And the company projects sales will grow by at least 25% each year for the next three years.
But before the sales' boom, the company first had to break into this closed market.
The African nations, which were used to operating their own systems, needed to be persuaded to grant Telecel an independent private communications license. Telecel also has had to wage a long-term marketing campaign to convince African people that cellular phones are not a futuristic technological fantasy.
"It was very hard to do because first of all, they thought it was a walkie-talkie, [that] it was not an actual telephone," said Gatt, the former chief executive of Aire Zaire, the state-run airline.
"They didn't believe it would work as well as it does, and they could not believe that they actually could communicate not only with each other but with other cities and with anyone else in the world," he said.
When Telecel began offering cellular service in 1986, it cost an African resident about $5,400 for a cellular phone set, plus a $100-per-month subscription fee and 36 cents per minute for usage.
Today, those costs are down to about $240 for the phone set; $50 per month for the subscription fee; and 30 cents per minute.
