Celtel Nigeria has launched a fixed payphone service targeting Nigerians unable to afford mobile phones or who live or work in places where mobile phone use is restricted. The service consists of a fixed payphone terminal and a special SIM card which can be carried about and recharged like a normal pre-paid SIM card. The operator claims the offering will help the government’s Universal Access Initiative which is aimed at increasing telecoms access across the country.
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Benin’s newest wireless licensee Globacom (Glo) is launching GSM services today. President Boni Yayi of Benin Republic is expected to lead a team of dignitaries and other stakeholders to the launch. Globacom is deploying its network across the West African country, covering major cities including Cotonou, Porto Novo, Abomey and Parakou towns, rural villages and communities.
Globacom is Nigeria’s second national operator (SNO), and was awarded licences to provide GSM, fixed voice, data and long-distance telephony services in Nigeria in August 2002, for which it paid USD200 million. The company became the fastest growing mobile operator in the country, signing up a million subscribers in the first nine months of operations, and claimed in excess of twelve million mobile customers by the end of 2007. Globacom is majority owned by Nigerian petrochemical firm Conpetro, which is itself owned by entrepreneur Mike Adenuga. The company is 100%-owned by Nigerian investors.
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Etisalat, the United Arab Emirates’ telecommunications company, is evaluating South Africa’s MTN Group as a potential acquisition target. It is part of a drive to expand its operation in Africa.
The company’s chairman, Mohammed Hassan Omran, disclosed the acquisition intention in a statement in Cairo, Egypt, yesterday. But this is coming after global mobil operator, Vodafone, Sunday, insisted that it had no plans to make a bid for MTN.
The UK group last week reviewed the case for making a bid for MTN after Bharti Airtel, India’s largest wireless operator, made an informal offer for a controlling stake in the Johannesburg-listed company.
“We are always looking for expansion in Africa,” Mohammed Omran told reporters at a telecom conference in Cairo, Egypt. “We are evaluating MTN among other companies.”
Etisalat is the incumbent telecommunications carrier and Internet Service Provider in the United Arab Emirates and is consolidating its network in Nigeria following the acquisition of a licence here for $400 million by its strategic partner – the Mubadala Development Company of the United Arab Emirates — early last year.
Mubadala, a strategic investment and development vehicle established and wholly-owned by the government of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, was granted a 15-year renewable Universal Access Service Licence in Nigeria in March 2007.
If Etisalat goes ahead and makes a successful bid for MTN, it will significantly alter the equation in the Nigerian telecom market, where both companies currently operate as competitors. Such a successful combination of operation is likely to involve the search for operational synergies that could also result in name changes and personnel restructuring.
Telecom analysts told Business Day last night that it is yet early days, but that with Etisalat looking to grow its business in Africa, in particular with eyes on Nigeria, it could go ahead to firm up its audacious intention to have a good bite of MTN.
Etisalat is the operating partner in this co-operation and it holds 40 percent interest in the telecom company now known as Etisalat Nigeria. Mubadala now holds 30 percent interest in the company, while the remaining shares are held by Nigerian investors led by Hakeem Bello-Osagie, the former chairman of UBA Bank of Nigeria.
With this transaction, Etisalat’s addressable market will grow to 600 million potential customers, an increase of 30 percent.
The MTN Group is a particularly “beautiful bride” and well sought after by ambitious investors. In Nigeria, it has 17.8 million subscribers (March 2008 figures). The group announced in its last financial report that it had recorded 61.4 million subscribers across its 21 operations as of 31 December 2007. This represented an increase of 53 percent from 40.1 million subscribers as of 31 December 2006.
In addition, the MTN Group declared a dividend of 136 cents per share, its highest dividend ever. MTN’s earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) EBITDA went up 42 percent to R31.8 billion.
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The UAE’s Emirates Telecommunications Corp. ETEL.AD (Etisalat) is looking at South Africa’s MTN as a possible acquisition target as part of a drive to expand in Africa, it chairman said on Monday.
“We are always looking for expansion in Africa,” Etisalat Chairman Mohammed Omran told reporters at a telecom conference in Cairo. “We are evaluating MTN, among other companies.”
“I see within three to four years that revenue from Africa will not be less than 25 percent,” Omran said.
India’s Bharti Airtel and MTN said earlier this month they were in talks that may or may not lead to a deal.
MTN has a market value of about $36 billion, and at end-March had 68.2 million subscribers in 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Government-owned Etisalat, which operates in 16 countries and has 51 million customers, has been on a four-year, $5 billion spending spree, setting up mobile operators in Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well as buying a stake in a Pakistani unit.
In December, it said it would buy 16 percent of PT Excelcomindo Pratama Tbk EXCL.JK to enter Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country. It is also starting an operator in Nigeria.
Shares of Etisalat were up 0.23 percent at 21.40 dirhams at 1034 GMT.
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With the Federal Government of Nigeria’s consideration of merging the National Broadcasting commission and the National Communications commission, the Nigeria landscape is getting ready for convergence regulation that reflects the reality of 21st century. With the launch last week of Mobile Tv by MTN and DSTV, It is goodbye to the old order. Without the merging of these two key regulators, their functions will be over lapping. The old order of regulation does not accommodate the new realities of convergence where Telecommunications, Information technology and media are now moving into new frontiers in technology, content and media.
The concept of “convergence” is frequently used to describe the development of global information society. The process of convergence starts when previously separate technologies coming closer together as a direct consequence of the advances made in ICT. The most profound changes will probably take place as a result of the process of technological convergence of the previously separate telecommunications, cable, information, publishing and mass media industries. These industrial sectors are often referred to as ‘converging industries’. Borders that once separate them are now increasingly being blurred. Presently, we have different types of networks for telephony, broadcasting ,radio and television and they are regulated differently and usually by separate authorities. National Broadcasting commission regulates, Radio and television while National communications commission regulates telecommunications.
Convergence regulation, encompassing telecom, IT and broadcasting while Multi-sector regulation, where telecom is joined together with other infrastructural
Utilities such as electricity, gas and railroads. While Competition regulation is a broad range of different industries, where telecom is only a tiny fraction.
In my own opinion, I believe strongly that Government is trying to achieve convergence regulation though they did not clearly state it because government business always has political undertone at the detriment of excellence.
Convergence of technology is breaking new content aggregation, delivery and consumption of communication services. The major technological changes that have facilitated the convergence processes are digitalisation and computerization.
Digitalisation enables new possibilities for development and creation of services within and beyond the framework of traditional communication sectors. It is, for example, likely that services that go beyond the traditional broadcasting services, like Internet services, Mobile Tv, Triple play services will have a certain weight on the broadcasting market in the future, as demand for these services is increasing with the penetration of the ICT. When transmission capacity for end-user sites reaches that needed for transmission of video services, the Internet can be one of the platforms for interactive TV services.
Emerging new infrastructures with more capacity, developments in the traditional networks enabling them to offer more capacity to end users, and developments in compression and coding technologies resulting in less bandwidth requirements for audio and video services all have diminished the technically based limitations for different networks to provide an increasing variety of different types of services. But there is still a long way to go before network capacity constraints are substantially eliminated.
Emerging new infrastructures with more capacity that can provide these new innovative services are Strong compelling reasons why the NBC and NCC Merger should be consummated soon so that they can offer regulatory policing because of the new changes in content that were formerly dedicated for specific industries can now be conveyed on a single or similar infrastructures because of the common digital form. This presents new possibilities for end users and new market potentials for producers, but it also presents regulatory problems that have to be solved.
Some countries like Indian had been able to foresee the future possibilities and hence they have planned ahead.
They merged infrastructure regulation and content regulation. The new Communications Commission of India (CCI),is a regulatory framework that facilitates the efficient utilization of available resources in different networks. The Indian communications regulator, integrates infrastructure and content regulation in one institution.
The UK is another example, in which the government united five existing regulatory bodies dealing with communications into one regulator, OFCOM, with authority in both infrastructural and content questions.
The challenges of such merger in Nigeria will be availability of highly skilled and knowledgeable helmsman to pilot the affairs of this new regulatory commission. There will be new challenges in a new way entirely because of the blurred border line between Telecommunications and Broadcasting. While the National communications was able to become the toast of the nation and a role model for regulators all over the continent was because the focused and purposeful leadership under Engr Ndukwe and his team mates.
The question is that with the Nigerian way of doing things, will they allow excellence and right judgment to reach a decision in choosing a new regulator or they will merge them with NCC still in control?
Since the movement of the convergence seems and is from telecommunications sectors,it will be more productive and more visionary to allow the telecommunications regulator to midwife the emerging convergence regulator.
Nigeria as a nation should invest more in ICT regulation training and studies to be able to consolidate its ICT successes in recent years. Convergence is shaping the present and future development of the ICT and media industries in ways
that challenge the existing institutional set-up.
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MNT Nigeria has formally launched a DVB-H based mobile television service to its subscribers. Ten channels are to be made available, provided the customer owns a specially designed ZTE handset and suitable SIM card. The service will be on offer in Lagos and Abuja initially.
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- December 19th, 2007
- 7:09 am
Benin’s newest wireless licensee Globacom (Glo) has announced it has completed its first test call.The Nigeria-based Globacom was awarded a GSM licence in August 2007. The company came top in an auction that supposedly pitched it against unnamed competitors from Libya and several other African countries. Reports from Cotonou said Globacom won the bid on the strength of its technical superiority, and its promise to roll out a network within three months.
Globacom is Nigeria’s second national operator (SNO), and was awarded licences to provide GSM, fixed voice, data and long-distance telephony services in August 2002, for which it paid USD200 million. The company became the fastest growing mobile operator in the country, signing up a million subscribers in the first nine months of operations, and claimed in excess of ten million customers by September 2007. Globacom is majority owned by Nigerian petrochemical firm Conpetro, which is itself owned by entrepreneur Mike Adenuga. The company is 100%-owned by Nigerian investors.
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- December 18th, 2007
- 2:47 pm
China TechFaith Wireless Communication Technology has won contracts from a Nigerian operator through its local channel and by a Kenyan operator through its local brand. The contracts are for CDMA 1X and mid-end CDMA/GSM dual-mode dual-standby feature phones. The contracts allow China TechFaith to further expand into the African market. A total of approximately 41,500 units were shipped in early December pursuant to these contracts.
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- November 26th, 2007
- 3:29 pm
Mobile operator Celtel International, part of the Zain group, has extended its ‘One Network’, the borderless mobile network in Africa, to an additional six countries. These are Burkina Faso, Chad, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan. These countries now join the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in the network which was initially launched in September 2006. All Celtel’s customers both prepaid and postpaid in the twelve countries from East, Central and West Africa, can move freely across geographic borders making calls and sms at local rates. They can top-up their prepaid phones with locally-bought airtime cards. The One Network service is automatically activated upon crossing into any one of the other countries, with no prior registration required or sign up fee charged.
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- November 2nd, 2007
- 9:10 am
IDG News Service reports that as of today, monopoly control over Africa’s SAT-3 cable system will officially come to an end, amid fears that the network will run into capacity problems as early as 2009. The submarine fibre runs from South Africa to West Africa, and then links to cable systems extending to Europe and Asia. Since 2002, SAT-3 consortium members with landing points have had a monopoly on selling the cable bandwidth in their own countries, and to countries without landing points. As a result of this closed regime, the cost of telecoms in Africa has remained high, since few operators were able to buy capacity at cost. Consortium members included Telkom of South Africa, Camtel of Cameroon, Ghana Telecom, NITEL of Nigeria, Angola Telecom, Maroc Telecom and Namibia Telecom. African regulators, policy makers, non-governmental organisations and consumers have been pushing for SAT-3 to include more operators to make the market more competitive and bring down bandwidth costs.
The scramble for bandwidth that will occur among African countries following the end of the monopoly is raising fears that the cable will run out of capacity, although Telkom is playing down this fear. Its CEO, Reuben September, said cable utilisation is continually being monitored to avoid the occurrence of any capacity shortfall
Africa currently has a number of cable projects in the pipeline, including the East African Marine System (TEAMS) linking Kenya to the United Arab Emirates, the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) which is planned to run from South Africa to Sudan with landing points in six countries, and the InfraCO West Coast project which will link South Africa to Europe. All are meant to spur bandwidth competition and bring down the high cost of telecoms on the continent.
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Celtel Nigeria launches fixed payphone service (Nigeria)
