Telkom to invest a billion dollars in Nigeria (Nigeria)
Telkom South Africa is to invest around USD1 billion in the expansion of the network of Multilinks, its Nigerian subsidiary, over the next five years. Telkom acquired Multilinks Nigeria, holder of a national unified access licence, earlier this year for USD280 million. Multilinks’ CEO, Justina Ramayia, said that his firm has begun an aggressive rollout program to increase network capacity and achieve coverage of all 36 states in the next five years. At present the CDMA2000 1x wireless in the local loop (WiLL) operator has infrastructure covering six states, including Lagos and Federal Capital Abuja. The expansion will see Multilinks’ network extended north to Kano and east to Benin City in Edo State within twelve months, said Ramayia, adding that with the new investment planned, the firm would ultimately achieve network coverage of 80% of the population with CDMA 2000 1xEV-DO Rev A technology.
Multilinks began operations as a fixed-wireless public telephony operator (PTO) in 1996. It acquired a unified access service licence last year, allowing it to provide fixed, mobile, data, long-distance and international services throughout Nigeria. South African national PTO Telkom was formed in September 1991 and is the largest communications services provider on the African continent, based on turnover and assets. It is 38%-owned by the South African government.
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Price War for Corporate Mobile Users (Japan)
SoftBank Mobile and NTT DoCoMo have both issued press releases this afternoon with new price plans specifically targeted at enterprise users. DoCoMo announced that all corporate customers committing to a two-year contract would receive an immediate 50% discount on basic monthly charges under the new Office-wari MAX 50? plan. The maximum 50% discount was previously reserved for customers that had subscribed to DoCoMo services for at least 11 consecutive years.
SoftBank CEO, Masayoshi Son, told media in October last year he would undercut any rate plan offered by the competition. The companies announcement today [in Japanese] took aim at KDDI’s so-called Orange WX plan as of 1 November. SoftBank Mobile has won the monthly subscriber net addtions race every month since May based on their new flat-rate voice plan announced in January.
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Vimpelcom performs above par (Russia)
Vimpelcom, Russia’s second largest mobile operator by subscribers, has posted a second-quarter year-on-year net profit rise of 84.3%, well above market expectations, due mainly to growing usage. The cellco reported net income of USD359.3 million versus USD194.9 million in the same period of 2006 and USD277.3 million in the first quarter of 2007. In a poll, analysts had forecast second-quarter earnings of USD324 million. CEO Alexander Izosimov said in a statement that his company achieved all-time records in key parameters, including revenue, OIBDA, net income, operating cash flow, and growth was further supported by improving operating parameters, including monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) and minutes of use in all markets. The consolidated results include Vimpelcom’s operations in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Armenia. OIBDA increased 59.7% to USD896.8 million, and net operating revenues rose 53.1% to USD1.72 billion. ARPU reached USD12.3 from USD9 a year before, above analysts’ expectations of USD10.6. ‘This further validates our belief in the high growth potential of the CIS, which is becoming an increasingly important part of our business,’ Izosimov said.
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Mobile firms prepare roaming charges complaints (UK)
The big four mobile telecoms firms in the UK are expected to launch a case against the European Commissions’ enforced roaming charges cuts, soon.
Reports early in the week suggested that such action might take place, and IT Week has had some confirmation from the parties involved. The firms are reacting to the recently enforced ruling that has led them to cut the amount they charge customers for making, and receiving calls when out of the country.
Although T-Mobile and Vodafone were reluctant to comment, Simon Lloyd, head of media relations at Telef³nica O2 Europe said, “Preliminary discussions are under way between the operators, but there’s nothing hard and fast happened yet. Our concern is the legal manner way in which the EU regulations were applied in this case. It’s not about trying to get the roaming charge reduction reversed – we’ve taken that on the chin.”
A spokesman for Orange added, “currently no action has been taken, however we can confirm that we are considering our legal position. If any challenge were to take place it would concern the way the regulation was introduced…”
Robert Bell, of lawyers Nabarro, said that if they were to pursue any claims, the telcos may have a case and could challenge the regulation before the European Court of Justice. “Their action is likely to be based on the grounds that the EU has misused its powers… The operators will argue that the regulation does not fulfill the harmonization condition as it sets a single rate for roaming, and thus is acting as a price regulator.”
Bell said that the time to launch such a complaint was running out, and warned the firms that they may fail in their claims.
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Pannon’s HSDPA coverage reaches 40% (Hungary)
Hungarian cellco Pannon has expanded its 3.5G UMTS/HSDPA network to nearly 80 towns and cities, or around 40% of the country’s population, after rolling out services to Sopron, Kaposvar, Dunaujvaros, Veszprem, Hodmezovasarhely and Salgotarj¡n. Pannon is offering a 50% discount on mobile internet packages until the end of October.
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