Celtel Malawi, which went off air last Saturday after fire gutted its head office. Celtel House, said today full restoration of its network should be completed within a week. According to the Nyasa Times the Celtel Malawi Managing Director, Charles Zizou, told reporters in Blantyre this afternoon its subscribers should hold their patience as the company is working around the clock to bring back the network.

The paper reported that Zizou, flanked by his Marketing Director Charles Maye and Operations Director Dave Huwa said they have engaged senior engineers from Siemens, Sony and Ericsson "We started shipping in the equipment on Wednesday and installation started yesterday. We have some of the world's best network engineers and we are confident with the work that is being done and we should be able to full restore the network within the work," explained the managing director.

The report says that since the incident occurred the company has kept close to its chest information on how much they have lost in business and how much are they likely to spend on installing the new network. "As you know this is a period of crisis and as a company we are not very much interested in costs or figures, our main focus is to ensure that we bring back network to our subscribers," he said, adding that the finance department was working on it and the nation will be told once the network is restored. And the marketing director assured the subscribers not to worry saying the database has been recovered.

After the press briefing Celtel management took journalists to their offices so that they see for themselves efforts being taken to reinstate the network. Meanwhile, the company says preliminary investigations have ruled out any foul play on the incident. There were reports that the fire might have been the work of some employees within the company who wanted to conceal some fraud.

Reports suggest that following the firs their has been an exodus of customers to rival network, Telekom Networks Malawi.