Just over two weeks after its surprise entry into Samoa’s telecommunications market, global brand Vodafone, has announced plans to invest USD$2.4 million in upgrading its local mobile infrastructure. 

The near $6.7 million tala equivalent investment follows complaints from some customers about slow speeds under the service over the past month. 

“Rest assured our technical teams are working tirelessly to resolve the data performance issue to their utmost,” said the Vodafone C.E.O., Satish Sharma.

“With this new investment, we are confident that our customer’s internet experience will be brought back to normalcy.”

The Samoa Observer revealed earlier this month that the global brand was entering the local mobile communications market by taking over Bluesky. 

The company says that it has seen an unprecedented surge in the use of its data services in recent days as the social distancing imposed by the state of emergency takes effect.

Organisations asking employees to work from home; the closure of restaurants; and reduced trading hours for supermarkets have all combined to increase the use of data-heavy services such as Netflix and video conferencing, the company said in a statement on Friday. 

“We expect this trend of data growth to continue; hence we have invested [USD]$2.4

Million [...]into this project to upgrade our mobile data core to help cater to our current data performance including that of future loads,” Mr. Sharma said.

The bulk of the investment will go towards ensuring the resilience of the company’s infrastructure network, the company said, with the ultimate goal of ensuring it is operational at all times. 

“We understand that these are trying times for the world and for our beloved nation of Samoa and we ask for your patience whilst our technical teams are performing an outstanding job to ensure that this resiliency is met,” Mr. Sharma said. 

“[We will be] striving to ensure our people stay connected to their family and friends, businesses can continue to run using remote working, our health services get all the support we can deliver and students can continue their education virtually.” 

Amalgamated Telecom Holdings of Fiji last year acquired a controlling stake in Bluesky in a deal valued at in excess of $100 million.