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18% rise in the first half net profit to $1.82 billion from a year earlier reported by Saudi Telecommunications Co. Acording to STC, the rise is attributed to higher mobile phone revenues, broadband services and the increase of foreign investment income. STC’s second-quarter net profit rose to 24% to $1.02billion from a year earlier.

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Turk Telecom, Turkish fixed line operator said that it is considering participation in a tender for the block sale of the national telecom operator of Kyrgystan, Kyrgyztelecom, as reported by Ihlas News Agency (IHA).

In June 2008, the Kyrgyzstan government said it was planning to sell a 78% stake of Kyrgyztelecom for a minimum amount of $45 million. In 2004, Germany’s Detecon won a tender for the stake with a bid of $16.2 million. Kyrgyzstan’s parliament subsequently canceled the deal, saying the price was too low.

Please note here that in 2005, Dubai-based Oger Telecom purchased a 55% stake of Turk Telekom for $6.55 billion in a privatization tender. In May, the government listed a further 15% stake in Turk Telekom on the Istanbul Stock Exchange, cutting its stake to 30%.

Tunisia will launch an international tender for a fixed line telecoms licence, part of a drive to boost inward investment and quicken economic growth. ‘The project of a second fixed-line phone concession will be accelerated, to be finalised as soon as possible. ‘A team charged with this project in the telecoms ministry is preparing an international tender … to select a second fixed-line phone operator,’ it added, without giving further details.

State-controlled Tunisie Telecom currently has a monopoly on the provision of fixed-line services. Dubai’s Tecom bought a 35% stake in the company in March 2006, paying TND3.05 billion (USD2.27 billion) for the holding, beating Vivendi’s rival offer of TND2.76 billion.

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Telecom Italia has reached an agreement to sell its 10.36% stake in Oger Telecom to the Middle Eastern holding company’s majority owner Saudi Oger for USD477 million, to reduce debts. The transaction is expected to be finalised by the end of July. Oger Telecom is an emerging markets telecoms holding group, controlled by Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Oger, with headquarters in Dubai, UAE. Oger Telecom has stakes in telcos and ISPs in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, South Africa and Turkey.

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UAE’s du, the country’s second telecom company, has nearly doubled its mobile subscribers to 400,000 within months of launching service, a newspaper reported on Friday.

The daily quoted the company as saying subscriber count was up from 250,000 at the end of March, and that it was on course to meet its original target of more than 30 per cent of the mobile market by the end of 2009.

“A few days ago we exceeded 400,000 so we’re on a good curve. That’s getting close to 10 per cent of the population in a just few months since launch,” du’s CEO Osman Sultan was quoted as saying.

du’s competitor, Emirates Telecommunications Corp (Etisalat), the second-largest Arab telecom firm by market value, had 5.78 million mobile subscribers at the end of March.

Dubai-listed du, which launched its mobile phone network in February, doubled its revenues to 183.2 million dirhams ($49.89m) in the first quarter, but had a net loss of 215.8m dirhams, up from 55.4m dirhams a year earlier.

The UAE federal government owns 40 per cent of du, while Abu Dhabi-government owned Mubadala Development Co holds 20 per cent. Tecom Investments has a 20 per cent stake.

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Lebanon’s Telecoms Regulatory Authority (TRA) will issue mobile and international telephony licences before the end of the year, its president said yesterday. In a presentation at the International Telecoms Summit in Dubai, Dr Kamal Shehadi said the TRA plans to start issuing mobile and international concessions in the fourth quarter. Lebanon currently has two mobile service providers, MTC Touch and Alfa, run under government-issued management contracts. Shehadi said the authority, which launched earlier this year, had three main objectives for the next twelve months: first, the liberalisation of mobile services through issuing two mobile licences whilst privatising the existing operators; second, liberalising the broadband market including the issuing of new broadband licences; and third, the liberalisation of international services by issuing new gateway licences.

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This service enables all du customers to access the internet at anytime and from any location with ease and comfort today through their 3.5G mobile phones and very soon mobile data cards.

du’s new Mobile Broadband service offers high data speeds of up to 1.8 Mbps. At such high speeds, users can easily follow up on the latest news, browse their favourite websites, download songs or videos and regularly check their emails, all on the move..

There are no activation or subscription fees for using Mobile Broadband services as the service is available as default to all du customers. All the customer needs to do is insert the du SIM card into the mobile data card or 3.5G mobile phone to access the internet. Users are charged according to their data usage at the rate of 1 fils/ KB

Osman Sultan, CEO of du, said: ‘du believes, given the fast pace of today’s life, the latest technology in the telecom and IT industry need to be tapped into, to make the lives of users easier and more convenient. The launch of the Mobile Broadband is a step towards achieving this objective. The service offers the freedom of interacting and conducting business over the internet without being restricted to a specific location or time.’

Sultan added: ‘du’s Mobile Broadband reflects our ongoing efforts to provide our customers with exceptional services and products. Our products are tailor-made to make the user’ professional and personal lives a lot easier.

With mobile broadband customers can enjoy wireless access to the Internet or business applications by connecting their mobile phone mobile data card which will be available very soon to a laptop. or to use the mobile data card or 3G mobile phone as a modem they will need to be in a 3G coverage area. When in a 3G service area the 3G indicator will be highlighted on the mobility manager software installed on the laptop or a small 3G symbol will appear on the 3G mobile phone when it is switched on.

du Mobile Broadband is currently available in most areas of Abu Dhabi and Dubai and will be provided to the rest of the Emirates very soon. This service is one of many offered by du’s under the umbrella of Next Generation Mobile Services that also includes International and National Video Calling, , Video mail, Mobile TV and HomeCam which will be available on the market fairly soon.

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KhaleejTimes writes…Dubai-based Oger Telecom is in the process of raising $4.3 billion through a loan, according to investment banking sources.

Sources said yesterday that five banks have been mandated to arrange the loan which will be used to  finance Oger Telecom’s 55 per cent acquisition of Turk Telekom.

The mandated lead arrangers according to sources are ABN Amro, Citigroup, BNP Paribas, Calyon and Fortis Bank. Oger Telecom, part of the Saudi Oger group, which is controlled by the family of the late Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, agreed to acquire a 55 per cent stake in Türk Telekom for $6.5 billion from the Turkish government.

Payment for the majority stake was agreed over a five-year period in equal instalments. Oger paid 20 per cent of the total in cash in 2005 and is due to pay the rest in five equal instalments with an interest rate of Libor plus 2.5 percentage points.

The new facility is aimed  at financing the final payments and refinancing the earlier two instalments.

“Oger Telecom has made two payments already but wanted to accelerate the remaining instalments by paying for the stake at an earlier date. An earlier payment for the 55 per cent stake in Türk Telekom will tidy up the the financing arrangements for the acquisition, which may have implications for a planned initial public offering (IPO).

Oger had admitted to plans to borrow from international markets following its decision to cancel its IPO in November last year. Oger telecom which announced its plans to raise $1.25 billion through an IPO pulled out of the deal following the poor performance of Gulf markets. The cancelled IPO included listing of Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) on London Stock Exchange and a $150 million IPO on the Dubai International Financial Exchange.

Following the pull out from the IPO, the company management clarified the public issue  has been merely postponed. The company may decide to relaunch its IPO should market conditions prove favourable.

Discussions are currently taking place with second-tier banks to commit to the $4.3 billion loan facilities, sources said, and general syndication is likely to be launched by the middle to the end of February.

The firm had wanted to list in part so that it could qualify for a mobile phone licence tender in Saudi Arabia due for 2007 as the company failed to qualify on a previous attempt because it was not a listed company. But with the removal of that requirement there is no urgency to launch an IPO. 

Meanwhile, technically, the Turkish Treasury is qualified to launch an initial public offering to off-load its 45-per cent stake in Turk Telekom.

However, the Turkish government is yet to take any decision on how much it wants to sell and when it wants to sell.

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