 nearby countries. Bharti Airtel Airtel Nigeria Indian conglomerate In 2010, Bharti pur- Bharti chased all of Zain's mobile operators. EMTS Limited Etisalat Etisalat of United Plans to expand 2G Arab Emirates; and 3G for nationwide private Nigerian coverage. investors M-Tel, Ltd. Mobile arm of pub- Due to failure to pay its licly owned fixed- debts, M-Tel might be line carrier NITEL liquidated. Multilinks Multilinks Helios Investment Operates on CDMA Partners, a Nige- technology. Has rian company that requested financial owns Helios Towers assistance from the Nigeria government. Starcomms, Ltd. Starcomms Nigerian publicly Starcomms uses 2G traded company and 3G CDMA and lost subscribers in 2010. Publicly owned Nigerian Telecommunications, Ltd. (NITEL) is one of two pro- viders with wired infrastructure throughout Nigeria. The Nigerian government has attempted to privatize NITEL by putting it up for sale. However, to date, successful Mobile Carriers Worldwide bidders have failed to make the required down payments and privatization has stalled. Because of the difficulty of earning profits in rural areas with low population densities that do not generate revenue required for investment in new facilities, many people believe that a public-private partnership will be required to subsidize offerings and upgrades in these areas. NITEL's mobile arm, M-Tel, has mounting debts and the low- est percentage of mobile customers in Nigeria. The other provider of wired service in Nigeria is Global Communications, which offers service under the Glo-1 brand. Global Communications is an African-owned company that installed an undersea cable between the United Kingdom and Nigeria in 2010. The cable has additional landing points along western Africa in Ghana, Senegal, Mauritania, and Morocco from which it offers landline Internet access. This offering has increased bandwidth options for businesses in Nigeria as well as western Africa. See Chapter 4, "Carrier Networks," for information about undersea cables. Commercial customers also 