Wireless Federation

Digi.Mobil, the Romanian 3G wireless operator, has signed up 1.2Mn subscribers since its launch a year back. The Digi.Mobil UMTS network now has coverage of 400 communities, covering around 50% of the population.

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STC posts a fall in Q3′08 net profits driven by increased costs related to expansions in the Middle East and Asia. Net profit slipped to SAR3.01 billion ($803.7 million) from SAR3.14 billion in 2007. Operating revenues rose by 58% to SAR13.54 billion while operating profit were up by 20.5% at SAR4.2 billion.
STC  has won third mobile licence in Kuwait and also shown interests in operations in Malaysia, Indonesia and India through its 25% stake in Malaysia’s Maxis Communications. Additionally, it owns 35% of Dubai-based Oger Telecom which has telecoms operations in Turkey, South Africa, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan, and it is among the bidders for a 25% stake in Oman’s dominant wireline and wireless operator Omantel.

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Fixed and Mobile Number Portability launches in Romania, enabling the users to switch their operator without having to change their phone number. With the coming of number portability the competition in market will grow as every operator will be running to give out lower tariffs in an effort to grab maximum subscribers with their competitive packages.
According Liviu Nistoran, president of telecoms regulator ANC, it is estimated that in the next two years of number portability approximately 20%-25% of mobile numbers will be ported. The regulator says that operators will have ten days to complete number porting requests.

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Mobile Number Portability enables mobile users to retain their phone numbers when changing from one mobile network operator to another. MNP has been introduced and implemented in different ways across the globe. The USP that MNP gives to the mobile phone users is the comfort to retain their contacts and the phone number which is distributed in their business and social circle. A recent study pointed out that having to give up their mobile numbers was the single most reason that subscribers did not want to change their operator despite poor quality of services. The move to introduce and implement MNP will heighten the competition in the telecom industry and will force Mobile operators to offer quality services to the subscribers in order to reduce the churn rate. This will also benefit service providers who will be able to attract customers from other operators by offering attractive value proposition.
Singapore was the first to implement MNP in 1997, followed by Hong Kong in 1999, Australia in 2001, South Korea in 2004, and Taiwan in 2005. Recently, MNP has been introduced in various countries like Malaysia, Macedonia to name a few. However, it continues to pose challenges due to its technical and regulatory complexities.

“We must ensure efficient implementation of MNP & Operators must realize that customer port-out/port-in time is much greater than the time required to buy a new connection/ shift to another operator” Himanshu Jay, Added.

It takes a minimum of 5 working days to port a number in the UK compared to 2 hours only in USA, as low as 20 minutes in the Republic of Ireland and even a remarkable 3 minutes in Australia.

The introduction of MNP could result in a significant churn in the telecom market and is likely to negatively impact established players whereas proves to be advantageous for the new entrants. For Instance, Vodafone in Turkey is forecasted to lose some 4% market share to Avea and Turkcell by 2009.

The implementation of MNP tends to face stiff resistance from the operators of the country like India wherein telecom market hasn’t reached the saturation point. MNP can be soon seen in India, Turkey & Romania. In fact, MNP has been effective in October in some cities of India.

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Romania sees the highest mobile penetration rate growth than any European Union (EU) country last year says the National Communications Authority (ANC). According to the sources, country’s penetration rate for cellular services rose by 25.5 percentage points to 106.2%, with more and more users now signing up for multiple mobile phone accounts to take advantage of special offers on individual tariffs. Around 26% of the population in urban areas have two mobile handsets where as 9% have three phones. At the end of 2007, Romania subscriber base was almost 23 million. There is net addition of 1.8 million subscribers in first half of 2008, added regulator.

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The Deutsche Telekom’s purchase of OTE gets approval from the European Commission. OTE works as the fixed line in Greece and Romania and as a mobile operator, in name of Cosmote in Bulgaria, Greece and Romania.

The European Commission while investigating about the acquisition, no competition concerns were observed.
Deutsche Telekom’s CE Rene Obermann, sees the descision as an important milestone towards strategic cooperation between the two companies and expects an approval from local antitrust bodies in southeast Europe, including Greece in October.

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RomTelecom, Romanian wireless licensee, hopes to launch the first mobile service by year end. The operator won a 450MHz mobile data licence earlier this month though the award was challenged by cellular operators Vodafone, Orange, RCS&RDS and Zapp/Telemobil.
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Court has decided to delay its decision on the recent award of a mobile licence to fixed line operator RomTelecom. Although the Govt went ahead with the award but the legal challenge to the auction which had been launched by cellular operators Orange, Vodafone, RCS&RDS and Zapp/Telemobil. Argument from these firms is that the licence fee for the new permit is well below what they paid for their own cellular licences. RomTelecom is hailing the court’s decision to delay a ruling as a victory.

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Rometelecom has won the competition licence put up for sale by the Romanian state, media reported. The competition in telecom market is heated up as Romtelecom will be able to provide wireless telephony and Internet services in areas so far covered exclusively by mobile phone operators, a business that brings out the revenues worth tens of millions of euros per year. Official announcement will be made on 8th September ‘08 by
National Regulatory Authority for Communications and Information Technology (ANRCTI).

The flip side of the story shows a different scenario, legal battle started by Orange, Vodafone, RCS&RDS and Zapp, in order to block the race for securing the mobile communications licence. It is anticipated that this battle will intensifyconsidering that, after the announcement of the winning offer, ANRCTI has two weeks at its disposal to effectively hand over the licence to Romtelecom. Four Operators are of a view to shelve the procedures of awarding mobile licence. The next date is set for 9th September in the court case filed by the four operators.

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Cosmote, Romania’s mobile operator has slashed it’s tariffs of making calls abroad to be align to the EC’s guidelines.
The tariffs will be:

• Making calls to numbers in other EU states will fall from EUR0.49 per minute to EUR0.46

• Cost of received calls will drop from EUR0.24 to EUR0.22

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