Zambia's second largest mobile phone operator Airtel Zambia has said it will spend more than $48 million to upgrade its network infrastructure across the country in order to improve its service delivery.

Airtel Networks director Abhishek Budhawani said the operator was doing everything possible in this regard, including initiating a multi-million dollar network infrastructure upgrade.

The Zambia Information and Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA) has threatened to take legal action against Airtel and other operators, including MTN and Zamtel, for poor service delivery.

ZICTA alleges that the poor service delivery is criminal in nature because customers were losing money in the process.

Issues such as dropped calls, congested network and insufficient network coverage are some of the problems that Airtel Zambia is currently facing.

The Parliamentary select Committee on Communications, Transport, Works and Supply recently raised these issues while on a recent visit to the company in Lusaka.

Budhawani asserted, "We are currently undertaking various investments to end network problems and we will continue working hard to bring network satisfaction our customers,"

Last week, Airtel managing director Peter Correia told the parliamentary committee that the company has increased its investment in the country in order to sustain its operations because of the many challenges it was facing.

Despite the challenges that include load shedding, he said the company has continued providing services without increasing retail tariffs.

Zambia is facing a critical power deficit that has resulted in the country seeing long hours of load shedding affecting business operations.