Starcomms revenue falls 6.8% in Q1 (Nigeria)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 6.8% year-on-year fall in the revenue has been reported by Nigerian telecoms operator Starcomms for the three months ended March 31, 2010 which went down to NGN7.94 billion (USD51.6 million). 32% decline in average revenue per user (ARPU) has also been recorded with the turnover going down from NGN1, 002 to NGN680.
The EBITDA of the fixed-wireless dropped 32% year-on-year to NGN1.6 billion in the first quarter of 2010. Due to higher network operating costs and maintenance charges resulting from the significant network expansion, the operating costs rose 12.4%. 22 states, 31 cities and over 170 towns are currently covered by the operator’s infrastructure.
16% increase in the total active subscribers to 2.66 million, pushed up data revenues as a percentage of total service revenues to 26% in Q1 compared to 20% in the same period a year earlier. Data revenues increased 21% year-on-year totaling NGN1.8 million in the quarter.
Asiacell expects 30% rise in the revenue this year (Iraq)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 30% increase in the revenue is expected by Iraqi mobile operator Asiacell this year as a result of demand from an influx of foreigners working in the oil sector. According to Asiacell CEO Diar Ahmed, turnover will rise to between USD1.4 billion and USD1.5 billion in 2010, compared to USD1.1 billion a year earlier, despite a global downturn and a tough investment climate.
Asiacell Communications is a consortium comprising Asiacell Iraq owning 30% stake, Qatar Telecom or Qtel with 30% stake and investment group Merchant Bridge with 40%.
He also announced that Asiacell signed up almost half of the two million new subscribers in Iraq in 2009 and growth is expected to accelerate as the private sector plays a wider role in an improved regulatory climate. The government of the country is planning to license a fourth national operator, in which the Ministry of Communications (MoC) would have a 35% stake.
Ahmed feels that the entry of the MoC as a competitor will create a conflict of interest because the government cannot be an operator and regulator and competitor at the same time.
MTS revenue rises 23.2% in Q1 (Russia)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 23.2% year-on-year rise in the revenue has been announced by Russian telecoms group MTS for the three months ended March 31, 2010 with USD 2.614 billion. The positive currency effects can be attributed as the reason behind the rise in the revenues.
Revenues from the mobile segment rose 17.9% to USD2.07 billion and from the fixed line segment, it increased 22.1% to USD408 million. Increased usage, greater adoption of data products, higher handset sales, subscriber additions and its move into the fixed market with the acquisition of Comstar UTS are some of the other factors contributing to the growth.
20.4% rise in the OIBDA of USD1.154 billion has been recorded while the OIBDA margin fell one percentage point to 44.1%.
Net profit of USD381.3 million has also been reported by the company when compared to a loss of USD53.5 million in the year-earlier period, helped by refinancing of much of its borrowing.
Orange to partner P4 for LTE tender in Poland
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A joint venture has been planned by Polish mobile operators P4 (Play) and Orange Poland for participation in the tender for Long Term Evolution (LTE) spectrum rights. An application has already been filed to the national competition watchdog UOKiK by the operators for clearance of the cooperation.
The tender for two frequency blocks of 35MHz each in the 2.6GHz frequency band is expected to be announced in the next few weeks. Operators have opined that the blocks are much too large for the needs of a single operator and suggested the regulator may want to see more cooperation in the industry.
According to Orange, it will take a final decision on whether to partner with Play after it receives the competition regulator’s opinion and the tender details are published.
Ratel rules on Telekom Srbija- Telenor agreement (Serbia)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The terms and price at which Telekom Srbija will lease its infrastructure to newly licensed Telenor has been decided by Serbian telecoms regulator Ratel.
No agreement was reached by Telenor with Telekom Srbija regarding the price for access to its network, after the Norwegian company was awarded the country’s second fixed line operator license late last year. This called for an intervention by the regulator to mediate an agreement.
The terms and prices for fixed interconnection services, call scheduling, access points and lines for interconnection, as well as access to the telecoms infrastructure has been set in the Ratel’s decision.
Rostelecom to construct LTE network in Sochi (Russia)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: An application has been filed in the State Commission for Radio Frequencies by Russian national operator Rostelecom for permission to construct Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks in Sochi. LTE development in the same region is also on the cards of mobile operator MegaFon.
Both operators are sponsors of the Winter Olympics 2014 which will be held in Sochi.
However, it has been argued by the ministry that building two LTE networks in the city is impractical and has called for negotiation between the players.
Econet’s network expansion started by Ericsson (Zimbabwe)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: A new phase of a network expansion project has been started by Swedish technology provider Ericsson for Econet Wireless Zimbabwe to allow the cellco to increase its capacity to approximately five million users by August 2010. The new network will also ensure that central Harare has full 3G coverage by the end of this month.
This network expansion is a part of a three-year frame agreement that was signed last year as per which Econet made Ericsson responsible for expansion of the core and access 2G and 3G networks as well as business support system delivery.
Transport and transmission technologies and services have been proved by Ericsson such as system integration and business consultancy.
Bharti Airtel creating a new business model for Africa
Bharti Airtel is planning a new collaborative business entity in Africa. The World’s fifth largest mobile operator, already having pioneered Network Outsourcing as well as IT outsourcing, is attempting to try out a new idea which has not been tried elsewhere in the world, except in England, where also it is a 3G network deal.
The idea is to engage with Tier II operators where it has acquired Zain’s assets, and form a new company and share Radio Access Network (RAN) and realted cost burdens. The network will include base transceiver stations and base station controllers. There will be an arms length relationship between the radio access network company and its customers – the mobile operators including Airtel.
Bharti-Airtel is speaking to various companies at this stage to make this a reality. Significant capex savings can be achieved if all these Tier II operators were to come on-board. This move is directly aimed at achieving some leverage against MTN the market leader in some of these geographies.
Airtel has proven that it will do whatever it takes to make Africa a success and will not necessarily just replaicate it’s indian models but use innovation and leverage wherever possible.
Bharti Airtel completes $9Bn Zain Africa Acquistion
(Wireless Federation) Sunil Bharti Mittal has announced that Zain Africa is now a 100% subsidiary of Bharti Enterprises.
Salient points:
- Airtel is the World’s fifth largest mobile operator with 180 million customers.
- Airtel brand will replace Zain in October 2010.
- Dispute with Broad Comm resolved.
- MTN was the first opportunity, not the first choice†– Mittal
Zain brings with it, 42 million customers, $3.6Bn revenue and $1.2B EBITDA, taking the total of the combined entity to over 180 million customers, $12.4 billion revenue and $4.7 billion EBIDTA, making it the world’s fifth largest mobile operator. Airtel had raised $8bn to finance this deal.
African Targets for Airtel
Manoj Kohli will lead Airtel Africa from Nairobi. He set out some targets for Airtel Africa by 2012-13:
- 100 million customers (up from the current 42 million)
- $5 Billion in revenue (up from the current $3.6 Bn)
- $2 Billion EBITDA (up from the current $1.2 Billion EBITDA)
Speaking at a press conference in New Delhi, Mittal said that they hope their Vendor partners will follow them to Africa.
The Airtel Brand will be launched in October across the 15 countries. Kohli is flying out to Nairobi later this week and they seem to have a huge leadership workshop planned. He said that around 40-50 people will shift to Africa from Airtel India and around half that will come into India from Africa to cross-polinate learnings from both sides.
Airtel is currently number 1 in 10 countries in Africa, and there are, on an average 2-3 telecom operators in a country. In the continent, Airtel is number 2 after MTN, and covers a population of 450 million.
Airtel Nigeria
Bharti also announced that the issues that the company was facing in Nigeria have now been partially resolved. In a statement, Bharti said: The long standing litigation on multiple fronts by our main local partner, Broad Communications Group and it’s affiliates, owned, controlled and managed by Mr. Oba Otudeko and his family has been satisfactorily settled. Broad Communications will withdraw all its court cases in this regard. Mr. Otudeko is being appointed as the Chairman of our company in Nigeriaâ€.
According to Mittal, Nigeria is one of the largest growing markets in the world.
No additional money was paid to Broad. It is in his (Otudeko) interest and ours to make this company grow,†Mittal said. Broad is the largest shareholder in Zain Nigeria. Mittal said he was stunned by the pace of growth in the Nigerian market it is buzzing and ready for higher usage of minutes. The distribution of phones and SIM cards is higher than in India there are people there selling SIM cards at the roadside. Zain is number 2 in that market.â€
Mittal said that they had not had any contact with Econet Wireless, but were told that Airtel is within its rights to take over Zain, and that they are satisfied. Besides, Airtel is fully indemnified.
MTN Vs Airtel in Africa
MTN was the first opportunity, not the first choice†– Mittal said. He added that Zain is a better deal because they have full management control, whereas in the MTN deal they had board control nad not management control. Managment control will be extremely crucial to replicate the minute factory model.
Support From the Indian Government
He also added that the company received overwhelming support from the Indian government, which supported and pushed Airtel to go to Africa Manoj Kohli was in regular touch with High Commissioners in the countries where Zain operates.
iPhone 4 Hardware Configuration Leaked by Foxconn?
Chinese technology sites have published what seems to be the hardware configuration of Apple’s newest version of the iPhone. Some people are also calling it the iPhone HD.
According to the sites that revealed the news, the new iPhone will have a new generation of touch display, a professional IPS / FSS LCD screen with a resolution of 960 x 640 pixels (the actual iPhone models have a resolution of 320—480 pixels) that will be much thinner (about 33% thinner), allowing a much longer battery life, and a much more improved screen display that will improve the user experience.
Battery life will also be improved by the 19% larger battery that will be included in the new version of iPhone. Also, the device’s performance will be improved by the 512 megabytes of Samsung memory used in order to make the device work smoother.
Other sources say that the new iPhone 4 will have a new camera with HD recording capability and flash (not Adobe Flash), a frontal camera that will allow video conferencing and probably over 32Gb of storage space.
The source at Foxconn said that the company is going to manufacture 24 million units of the next generation iPhone. The hardware configuration is not confirmed how could it be only hours before Steve Jobs’ keynote at the WWDC 2010.
Editor’s note: Please wait for final confirmations until later this evening.
