Wireless Federation

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Looking at the pace with which the Indian mobile market is growing in terms of subscribers, DoT has run out of numbers that begin with ‘9′ and soon enough will have numbers that begin with the digit ‘8′. According to a local media report, nearly 100 million new numbers will be introduced in the market, half of which will be allotted to the operators.
According to TRAI, India’s mobile subscriber base stood at 415 million at May’09-end compared to 277 million, a year ago. Considering the substantial growth in the number of telecom service subscribers, DoT is planning making mobile phone numbers to 11 digits.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Egypt has ended April with a subscriber base of 45.587 million, gained 1 million in comparison with end-March, the government said.
The country had 41.272 million subscribers at the start of the year, the government-run
Egyptian Cabinet Information and Decision Support Centre reportedly said.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Zain Ghana’s, the Ghanian subsidy of the Zain Group operating in Middle East and Africa, subscriber base has crossed the 1 million mark. The operator has also launched a new reward programme dubbed as ‘Live Your Dream’, for it subscribers. The reward programme offers opportunity to all Zain subscribers in Ghana to win GH¢75, 000 to actualise their dreams.
Ransford Nyarko, Marketing Director of Zain Ghana, who indicated the programme was an appreciation of Zain to its subscribers, said: “When Zain came to Ghana, it empowered its customers by giving them the platform to choose their phone numbers, becoming the first mobile network to reward customers with the ground-breaking “You Pay, Zain Pays’ promotion.”

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Etisalat Nigeria subscriber base has reached a million mark for its mobile network around seven months after launching in the country. The telco launched commercial GSM services in
Nigeria in November 2008 in seven cities, and by the end of the year had just fewer than
400,000 subscribers. This achievement is attributed to its offer of free network-to-network
calls for a six month period.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: BSNL targets a 3G subscriber base of 100,000 by Sept. (India) State run PSU, BSNL has unveiled that it is targeting a 3G subscriber base of 100,000 by September. Presently, the next generation service is available in 70 cities and has gained just 9,000 subscribers since launching 3G in February 2009. The company’s Chairman and Managing Director, Kuldeep Goyal, reportedly said that BSNL hasn’t begun actively marketing and advertising the service, and won’t do so until July when the 3G network covers 150 cities. By March 2010 the company to cover 1,000 cities and achieve a 3G subscriber base of 1.2 million. MTNL has so far gained just 400 3G subscribers since the launch of the network a month ago. The operator anticipates reaching 300,000 subscribers mark in the first year.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Indian telecom industry has reported a downfall in subscribers’ addition for the second month in a row, with 11.59 million wireless subscribers being added in May 2009.

This is against an addition of 11.90 million wireless users in April, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said. Total 11.44 million telephone connections (wireless and wireline) were added in May compared to 11.75 million connections added in the previous month. With this, the telecom subscriber base stood at 452.91 million in May against 441.47 million in April.

The overall teledensity, calculated on the basis of the number of people using phones for a population of 100, has reached 38.88 at the end of May against 37.94 in April, Trai said.

In may 2009, the subscriber base stood at 415.25 million with the addition of 11.59 million wireless subscribers.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: MTS India, the new entrant in the Indian mobile foray, has posted a subscriber base of 150,000 in Tamil Nadu. The operator further anticipates its subscriber base to reach the 500,000 subscriber mark soon. MTS at present serves over 1 million subscribers in various states across the nation.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: China Telecom, the Chinese mobile operator has added 2.20 million mobile subscribers in the month of May, taking the total mobile subscriber base to 36.91 million at month end. The operator further added 750,000 new broadband subscribers and lost 1.35 million fixed voice subscribers.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 3 UK has reportedly inked a deal with virtual network aggregator x-Mobility to sign up new MVNOs to its business. X-Mobility will bring six companies on board, including iCard, a company that targets the prepay calling market, and Catalyst, a firm targeting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and students, says report.

X-Mobility is anticipated to pursue customers wanting to sell prepay voice services, while 3 will target MVNO opportunities in mobile broadband. This move is aimed at accelerating 3’s progress in the MVNO market and is likely to tap Virgin Mobile’s three million-strong subscriber base.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Russia has ended May with a mobile subscriber base of 194.7 million, rising by 1.9 million from April. The mobile penetration in the country grew to 134.1%, up from 132.8% in April.There were 195 and 174 SIM cards in use per 100 inhabitants in Moscow and St. Petersburg, respectively, at end-May.
It is further reported that the subscriber base of Ukraine dropped to 55.1 million, down by 0.1 million from April. Penetration decreased by 0.1% versus the previous month, to 119.5% at end-May.