Mobile call rates in Lebanon to slide in April’09
Lebanon will see a downfall in the mobile call rates by April’09. The government has official announced a reduction in call rates for both prepaid and post paid cards in order to lower the pressure on the the Lebanese.
The reduced call rates, according to the telecom minister Jebran Bassil, will save the Lebanese $225 million annually. The minister din’t predict a downfall in the revenues of the telcos as the country predicts that the country’s subscriber base is likely to rise to 2million.
According to the new price scheme, the monthly subscription for postpaid subscribers will slide to $15 from the current $25, experiencing a 40% drop.
The per minute calling rate for the postpaid cards will also fall to $0.11 from the current $0.13, a drop of 16%. The downfall will lure the customers to shift from the prepaid to postpaid schemes.
On the other hand, the cost for a prepaid card for a duration of 1 month will fall from the current $45 to $25, while the cost of a one-minute call will drop to $0.36 from the current $0.50.
According to Bassil, Egypt’s Orascom Telecom and Zain will issue three months validity prepaid cards in April and are expected to raise their subscriber base by 400,000 each in April.
“Every body will be winning. The government will sustain its revenues and the citizen will see a drop in his cellular bills,” Bassil said. He further said that the government will spend $100 million to upgrade and expand the size of the cellular networks.
“But I am sure that we will recover this money once we have more active subscribers,” the minister said.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Etisalat to bring Apple iPhone in UAE & Saudi Arabia
Etisalat teams up with Apple to ship iPhone 3G in the UAE. Also, Saudi Arabia is in Apple’s list through Mobily. The phone will be available in both countries from later this month and the company has said it will release more details over the coming days.
BSNL to make 3G a reality by March’09 (India)
BSNL will launch its third Generation (3G) mobile services in Orissa by March’09. The first launch would be in Bhubaneswar and after that the service will extend to the district headquarters of the state. The total investment of Telecom Major is Rs.100 Crore for the infrastructure in Orissa circle. Initially, we are putting up additional 15 towers for this purposeâ€, said SC Joshi, Chief General Manager (telecom), BSNL, Orissa circle. Apart from broadband, BSNL’s 3G services would support high-resolution colour display, polyphonic sounds and built-in video cameras. The 3G services would also be useful for the e-seva kendras and the common facility centres being planned by the Orissa government, added Joshi. BSNL has around 7 lakh landline subscribers and 11.5 mobile subscribers in the Orissa circle.
Jordan Telecom ends 2008 with 2.52Mn subscribers
Jordan Telecom has posted a subscriber base of 2.52 million at 2008-end, a rise of 3.4% since 2007-end. The overall rise was driven by the growth in Orange’s internet subscriber base along with the rise in Orange Mobile subscriber base which reached to 1.76 million from 1.71 million.
Jordan Telecom ended 2008 with a rise of 6.1% in its net profit since 2007 reaching JD100.3 million. EBITDA rose by 5.5% to JD183.2 million. The consolidated revenues saw a slight upliftment of 0.9% in 2008 and reached to JD401.4 million compared to JD397.9 million in 2007.
The Jordan based service provider’s operating expenses slided by 2.7% to JD218.2 million at year-end 2008 against JD224.3 million over the same period in 2007.
Commenting on the results, JTG Chief Financial Officer Raslan Diranieh said: The year 2008 was a difficult year, yet we managed to realise growth.â€
With the increase in prices of oil and commodities in 2008, people’s priorities changed, which affected the telecom sector a little bit,†Diranieh said.
He further said that 2009, looking at the present scenario of the sector, doesn’t seem to be an easy year for the telecom sector as the industry is now closing saturation. The other challenges that the industry might face are related to the global recession and various other political developments in the country.
To face these challenges, Diranieh said: In 2009, the JTG will focus on innovation regarding current services and the introduction of new innovative services such as 3G services and others.â€
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Global M-Payment Consortium introduces CodeOne: a Revolutionary Global Mobile Payment Platform Solution (USA)
Global M-Payment Consortium introduces CodeOne: a totally revolutionary global mobile payment solution platform. Global M-Payment Consortium provides huge opportunities to thousands of people through the benefit from the combined resources of its members. Global Mobile Payment Consortium (GMPC), an established US and Brazilian-based company with local partners, sales offices and centers of excellence in several countries, and a global support infrastructure, CodeOne supporters and associated members are capable of providing full range of professional services through a highly motivated worldwide professional network of people.
The familiar handset found in today’s cell phones, have been joined by an array of multi-function devices – (computers and personal digital assistants) – and the distinctions among them are beginning to blur. What is clear is that within this competitive market, mobile payment and mobile banking are key component of the acquirer’s credit card service mix. To stay in the game, delivery of reliable and cost-effective service is critical.
The mobile phone is the device that most people do not leave their homes without. And mobile banking is an addition to the wide range of applications and services they can access via cell phone to make life easier, especially through when using CodeOne
CodeOne is a unique platform that is able to capture, format, and to interface GSM mobile phone payment transactions with acquirers’ credit card companies and banks. Helping these companies to differentiate and generate new revenue from mobile payment services
CodeOne global mobile payment service began as a component base of the Global System Mobile Communications (GSM), the European standard for digital service. With the strong trend indicating successful market strategy, accordingly to many worldwide market researches in the industry, the ability for mobile payments has been quickly defined as a must have solution in the financial industry; capitalizing on more than 3.8 billion cell phone in the globe, with about 80% of this worldwide handset foot print of phone been GSM and JAVA enable terminals. Applications of mobile payment will increasingly be offered by credit card companies and banks through download or use of mobile web, as a complement to existing messaging services (SMS); this will be the mobile payment and mobile banking key for banks to attract and retain customers.
“The mobile phone is the device that most people do not leave their homes without. And mobile banking is an addition to the wide range of applications and services they can access via cell phone to make life easier, especially through when using CodeOne”, said Mr. Ivan Silva, GMPC’s president. “CodeOne is a unique platform that is able to capture, format, and to interface GSM mobile phone payment transactions with acquirers’ credit card companies and banks. Helping these companies to differentiate and generate new revenue from mobile payment services”, added Mr. Silva.
CodeOne Mobile Payment Platform can be configured to allow total compatibility with current acquirer’s Point-of-Sales (POS) network. And has highly secure, proven platform and PCI compliance ready Client/Server architecture. For acquirers it is important that a mobile payment solution to be fully compatible with current transaction confirmation and authorization flow, which CodeOne is.; its primary design was to ensure this was accomplished. CodeOne provides huge foot print coverage, since it is compatible with all GSM mobile phones and all mobile telecom operators, allowing high connectivity (WEB, POS, mobile phone) – and extreme low dependence on SMS, GPRS, or USSD.
CodeOne is a simple, secure, easy to use tool both for clients and merchants, and allows high mobility, speed, at a very low operational cost; resulting in the conversion of new points of sale and market segments. CodeOne is designed with portability and multi-functionality transactions (credit, debit and employee’s benefits) in mind, so acquirers and issuers do not need to ask customers to download multiples application in their cell phones. The CodeOne Application Server is scalable in performance and pricing. It supports multiple technologies concurrently, and is easy to deploy, operate and administer.
A small J2ME based client application is installed at the merchant’s cell phone. This application can be downloading into the merchant’s cell phone via GRPS by directly enter a URL at the address bar, or by following a text message link provided by the acquirer or issuer. As the USSD protocol definition for this industry segment matures, CodeOne product roadmap presents an opportunity to directly distribution of this client application software by this kind of distribution server menu process based.
The CodeOne Application Server manages all network interactions and provides sophisticated delivery mechanisms to ensure reliable connectivity of all transactions to acquirer’s system. It supports performance monitoring and full billing capabilities. The proprietary and highly optimized JAVA Application Client Interface along with the industry standard Short Message Service (SMS) from wireless operators, or GRPS cell phone public network facilitates prototyping and deployment of value added services.
CodeOne is NFC ready since all necessary infra-structure and application solutions are easily interfaced with NFC hardware and software infra-structure using one API to interface CodeOne protocol when NFC equipment is available in large scale in the market. CodeOne can, for example, use the cell phone screen to generate CodeOne in the Bar Code or 2D Code. The picture of the Bar Code could then be scanned at the point-of-sales using existing bar code scan equipment largely utilized in the retail business today.
About Global M-Payment Consortium
The Global M-Payment Consortium is a powerful force for the advancement of the next generation mobile payment platform lead by the worldwide mobile payment business and scientist Mr. Ivan Silva. Mr. Silva holds several US and International patents; IEEE member and Bell Labs Alumni, received the Excellence in Engineering and Innovation from Schlumberger, and the State of Sao Paulo Governor Award for innovation and technology development. Besides strong technical background and being a scientist Mr. Silva owns or controls a number of companies in the United States and Brazil.
For more information, please visit www.m-codeone.com
Vietnam adds 3.2Mn subscribers in Jan’09
Vietnam begins New Year with a boost in its subscriber base; it has added 3.2 million new phone subscribers, an increase of over 160% from the same period earlier. By the year end, it is anticipated that the country will have a total of 82.6 million subscribers, including nearly 49 million belonging to the Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT).
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Telenor and DTAC shift focus on Thai youth
Telenor, the Norweigian mobile operator, the major share holder in DTAC, is turning its focus on the Thai youth to have a better focus on its future mobile trends. “Given to our research showing mobile communications and internet habits in Thailand, it provided Telenor and DTAC valuable data that help us to identify new products and services to tailor customers’ requirements,” said Jens Olav Bjornson, the managing director of Telenor Research & Innovation Centre Asia Pacific (Tricap), the research arm of Telenor.
He further said that the company’s mission is to build up greater insight in the Asian users behaivour, better customer experience, new service concepts and better working ways with its local and regional partners.
According to a research conducted by Tricap, it was noticed that 93% of the interviewed, preferred calling rather that SMSing, a Thai youngster on an average sends 3 SMS/day in comparison to the youngster in Malaysia and Pakistan, who send 18 and 6 SMSes respectively.
The Thai youngster keeps aside 15% of his monthly budget aside for mobile phone bill. The study further reveals that on an average people retain their mobile phone for1.52 yars while 4% of them switch to various phones with the change in style.
The youngsters are early and quick adopters of technology and so should be the focus for the operators if they believe in quick success.
Wireless Mobile Telecom Wireless News
Mobinil anticipates sluggish profit growth (Egypt)
The global recession is going to affect the profit growth of Egypt’s Mobinil, the leading operator in terms of subscribers, this year, Chairman of Mobinil, Alex Shalaby, said. “There is no question we will be impacted, albeit in a small way, by what is happening around us as we are impacted by less tourism and fewer investors,” Shalaby added. According to the firm, its fourth quarter profit grew 25%, helped by more mobile traffic. The firm would not post negative growth in 2009, but declined to give a specific forecast, Shalaby said.
