www.WirelessFederation.com/news: India’s Bharti Airtel Ltd.’s Africa entry with services such as money transfers, banking and insurance has been planned to be countered by Millicom International Cellular SA, a company with mobile-phone customers in countries from Guatemala to Tanzania by accelerating its growth process and bringing new innovations for the people.
Millicom operates under the brand name is Tigo and was established 20 years ago by Sweden’s Kinnevik Investment AB as a holding company for cellular assets.
Like Bharti, France Telecom SA, Vodafone Group Plc and America Movil SAB de CV, Millicon is also pushing third- generation services for wireless Internet besides broadening its portfolio that includes SMS-based information services and microloans for topping up prepaid balances. Millicom was also interested in some of Zain’s Africa assets that Bharti agreed to acquire for $10.7 billion in March. In the process to speed up growth, the operator is also planning to bid in Costa Rica.
Meanwhile, other Greenfield operations or mergers would also be considered if the company is capable of becoming first or second in their markets and producing at least $100 million in annual revenue.
According to Chief Executive Officer Mikael Grahne, sooner or later markets come to a certain level of maturity and to get growth from then on you need new products and services, so Millicom is very heavily focused on anticipating that and the company will pursue customers who can pay more for extras and better network quality, rather than competing strictly on price of basic services.
Analysts feel that Bharti’s entry into Africa is likely to spark a wave of consolidation as less profitable players exit the market and bigger one resort to extensive investment. Earlier, an investment of as much as 7 billion euros ($8.8 billion) in deals focused on Africa and the Middle East in the next five years has been announced by France Telecom CEO Stephane Richard while Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao announced this month that sub-Saharan Africa is among the three priority areas†for the world’s largest mobile-phone company.
