Alon Holdings Blue Square announces signing of Mou with Partner Communications for launching MVNO services (Israel)
Alon Holdings Blue Square – Israel Ltd. announces that in connection with the Company’s plans to enter the cellular communication market by becoming a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (“MVNO”), on March 23, 2011 - Alon Cellular Ltd. (“Alon Cellular”), a joint- venture company in which the Company holds indirectly 70.1%, signed an MOU with Partner Communications LTD. (“Partner”) for launching cellular services in an MVNO model, which will enable Alon Cellular to offer cellular services and become a major player in Israel’scommunication market.
At this stage, there is no certainty that Alon Cellular will eventually operate such business, and the Company cannot assess at this stage the conditions and costs of such operation.
Alon Holdings Blue Square- Israel Ltd. (hereinafter: “Alon Holdings”) is the leading retail company in the State of Israel and operates in four reporting segments: In its supermarket segment, Alon Holdings as pioneer of modern food retailing, Alon Holdings, through its 100% subsidiary, Mega Retail Ltd., currently operates 210 supermarkets under different formats, each offering a wide range of food products, “Near Food” products and “Non-Food” products at varying levels of service and pricing. In its “Non-Food” segment, Alon Holdings, through its 100% subsidiary BEE Group Retail Ltd., operates specialist outlets in self-operation and franchises and offers a wide range of “Non-Food” products as retailer and wholesaler. In the Commercial and Fueling Sites segment, through its 78.38% subsidiary, which is listed on the Tel Aviv stock exchange. Dor Alon Energy inIsrael (1988) Ltd is one of the four largest fuel retail companies in Israel based on the number of petrol stations and a leader in the field of convenience stores. Dor Alon operates a chain of 188 petrol stations and 177 convenience stores in different formats in Israel. In its Real Estate segment, Alon Holdings, through its TASE traded 78.26% subsidiary Blue Square Real Estate Ltd., owns, leases and develops yield generating commercial properties and projects.
Israeli communications minister urges antitrust regulation of cellcos
Moshe Kahlon, the Israeli communications minister, has called on Antitrust Authority Commissioner Ronit Kan to consider whether the country’s mobile network operators should face additional regulation after recent activities.
According to reports, the move was prompted by recent price hikes made by the cellcos, with Ministry of Communications (MoC) spokesperson Yechiel Shabi noting that the minister believes it is in the antitrust authority’s power to check the companies’ recent behaviour … The three mobile companies raised customer rates on about the same day and at similar rates and also approached the High Court of Justice with the same claims.
All three of Israel’s major mobile providers Cellcom, Pelephone and Partner Communications revealed last week that they would increase tariffs in light of imminent reductions in interconnection rates, and Shabi stated that should they be declared an oligopoly, the antitrust watchdog would be authorized to supervise the operators.
Israel’s Partner Communications Profits Up by 17.5%
Israel’s Partner Communications – which trades as Orange has revealed its Q3 results. As per the results the company’s quarter revenues rose by 4.8% to US$450 million, while net profits increased by 17.5% to US$84 million. EBITDA also up by 12.5% toUS$175 million.
Revenues from data and content services excluding SMS increased 11.1% to US$44 million 11.1% of service revenues, increasing by 25% compared with 9.2% of service revenues in Q3 2009.
In the quarter the company added 37,000 net new cellular subscribers. At quarter-end, the cellular subscriber base was approximately 3,133,000. At quarter-end, there were approximately 1.49 million 3G subscribers. Total market share is estimated to be approximately 32%, no change from the previous quarter.
According to Partner’s CEO, Mr. Yacov Gelbard, Partner continues to achieve excellent financial results. However, the company is not taking its achievements for granted and that is why they took two significant steps this quarter to ensure that the profitability continues to grow in the coming years: first, by signing an agreement with Ericsson for the upgrade of network, and second, by entering into an agreement for the purchase of 012 Smile, a leading Israeli operator of international telecommunication services, internet services and local fixed line telecommunication services. In their core cellular business, the company is currently formulating a strategic plan to mitigate the impact of the reduction of interconnect tariffs. The measures Partner may take include, among others: cost cutting, operational efficiency improvements and repackaging of product offerings.
Orange to ink Network upgrade deal with Ericsson
Israel’s Partner Communications (trades as Orange) has announced a deal with Ericsson for the upgrade of its existing networks and the deployment of 4G network.
The Agreement incorporates the upgrade, replacement and the expansion of certain parts of the company’s existing cellular and fixed line networks and the maintenance of the networks, including enhancement of Partner’s abilities with respect to the cellular and fix line ISP services it provides. The commercial operation of the 4G network is subject to the allocation of the relevant frequencies by the Ministry of Communications.
The term of the Agreement will be effective from the date of signature and until December 31, 2014, whereas the replacement of the Company’s switches and radio equipment is scheduled to be carried out by the end of the year 2012.
The total net amount that Partner will be required to pay, in quarterly installments throughout the term of the Agreement, is approximately US$100 million.
Partner Communications net profit rises 13.9% (Israel)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: 13.9% year-on-year increase in net profit at ILS337 million (USD91 million) has been reported by Israeli mobile network operator Partner Communications in the financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2010. Significant improvement in profitability parameters has been attributed as the reason behind the good performance.
A turnover of ILS1.587 billion for the three-month period has been generated by the telco which is up 12.4% against 1Q 2009 while EBITDA of the company reached ILS619 million, a 12.1% y-o-y rise. Partner has expressed its criticism against Ministry of Communications’ (MoC’s) decision to reduce mobile termination rates, announced earlier this month.
According to the company, the proposed legislation was out of line with previous Ministry policies as well as worldwide common practices and it might have a material adverse impact on its earnings and it intend to take all the necessary measures to mitigate it, inter alia, by reviewing the cost structure and generating additional revenues from the fixed line business.
Partner prepares for LTE deployment (Israel)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The preparatory work for the deployment of Long Term Evolution (LTE) services has been started by Israeli mobile network operator Partner Communications. A tender is supposed to be held by Partner for proposals on an upgrade to its existing core network. Besides a tender would also be held for an additional network components that would enable it to launch commercial 4G services as soon as it received the requisite frequencies.
Israeli Defence Force is expected to release fourth-generation spectrum by early 2012. 900MHz band of spectrum currently held by Partner is also resolved to be used by the operator. At present, 2100MHz band is used by Partner for its third generation services. Vendors other than its current main supplier Ericsson will be considered by the firm. Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent have all been mooted as possible vendors of interest.
According to an official at Partner, NSN and Huawei are companies that have shown that they have impressive solutions for rolling out an LTE network, alongside Ericsson and the company will upgrade its core network to IP so that it can unite voice and data, and the firm will upgrade the network to speeds of 21Mbps and 42Mbps in the future.
Hutchison Telecom’s customer base reaches 12.8m
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: With an annual growth of approximately 98% on a like-for-like basis, 6.3 million customers has been added by Hong Kong based Hutchison Telecom, taking its customer base to approximately 12.8 million. The relaunch of the operators business in Vietnam and ongoing expansion of the network coverage in Indonesia paved the way for this massive expansion in the subscribers’ numbers.
Larger Indonesia operation and the revenue generated by the newly launched GSM services in Vietnam led to the rise in the revenue by 2.7% year-on-year to US$239 million. With the disposal of the Group’s entire indirect stake in Israel’s Partner Communications, ¬the net profit for the year increased from US$239 million to US$817 million.
According to Dennis Lui, Chief Executive Officer of Hutchison Telecom, 2009 saw the Group unlock significant shareholder value again and the company has created, maximized and delivered value for its shareholders over the five years since listing – an achievement that has been based on pursuing carefully chosen opportunities with a measured approach. Mr. Lui also revealed that Hutchison will continue to work on building out its principal growth markets to a fully competitive state.
Hutchison Whampoa, a majority shareholder in the company is currently in the process of being taken off the stock market.
Partner Communications makes organizational changes (Israel)
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Organizational changes has been made by Israeli mobile operator Partner Communications designed to accomplish its strategy of transforming from a pure mobile player into a comprehensive communications service provider, as well as strengthening the firm’s customer-centric approach. The Private Customers division will be lead by Erez Paz, who presently serves as VP of marketing and content and Gil Rosenfeld, VP of the sales division, will lead the Business Customers division.
Eli Glickman, the deputy CEO, will lead and oversee the cross-company structural changes and the amalgamation of the fixed-line division into the new organizational structure.
VP of operations and logistics, Chaim Beker, joined the company in 1998, has decided to retire at the age of 65 but will continue to serve in his position until his successor assumes responsibility.
CDMA to GSM Migration: Pelephone
The management of cellular telephone provider Pelephone has recommended that the company migrate from CDMA to GSM wireless technology. Installing a new network will cost around $200 million.
The board of directors has already discussed the issue and is apparently about to green-light using the same technology already adopted by rivals Cellcom and Partner (Orange) – the third generation of UMTS.
The Pelephone board sees the move as a revolution, and an opportunity to dramatically improve the company’s bottom line. As the only one of Israel’s main three cellular providers to still be using CDMA, Pelephone is lagging sorely behind Partner and Cellcom.
Some members of the Pelephone board are expecting profits to increase by up to NIS 230 million a year once the migration is completed. Their calculation is based on the fact that the company is currently missing out on the roaming fees that its technologically more advanced competitors receive when their customers use their phones abroad, to the tune of over NIS 250 million a year in revenues.
Once Pelephone switches over to GSM, it too will be able to benefit directly from calls made abroad by its subscribers.
Assuming 50-percent marginal contribution to profits, roaming agreements with foreign wireless providers could add more than NIS 130 million to Pelephone’s profits annually. Pelephone is also hit hard by the need to pay up to $50 more per phone than its rivals, and its maintenance costs are higher as well. Eliminating these two profit drains could pad Pelephone’s profits by an additional NIS 90 million to NIS 100 million per year.
The change is likely to accelerate Pelephone’s marketing and sales of 3G devices, since it will give the company a motive to shift as many subscribers as possible over to the new network. That may also be the reason behind Pelephone CEO Gil Sharon’s plans to retool the company’s service division over the next year.
Since Pelephone has nearly 2.4 million subscribers, the migration will not be easy. It will have to be done gradually. In the initial stages it will require maintaining two networks simultaneously, putting added pressure on the company’s maintenance and operations budgets. One of the main challenges faced by Pelephone will be the creation of a new antenna network to support it.
If the board of directors approves the technology switchover, it will be the most important decision taken by Sharon since taking the helm. The decision will also have far-reaching consequences for Bezeq’s owners Haim Saban, Apax and Mori Arkin.
Approximately five years ago, when a major tender process was held for radio frequencies, Pelephone made the decision to back up its technology with UMTS at a cost of about NIS 220 million. The company paid the entire amount for the frequencies, but it has not paid frequency fees for them. If it makes use of the frequencies, it will face fee bills amounting to tens of millions of shekels.
Hutch returns to profit on better business in India, Israel
(Associated Press via NewsEdge) Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecommunications returned to profit in the first half of this year, boosted by an improvement in its businesses in India and Israel.
Net profit for the six months ended June was HK$2 million ($257,100), a turnaround from a net loss of HK$370 million ($47.6 million) in the first half last year.
Hutchison Telecom, a unit of Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing’s Hutchison Whampoa, said its first half revenue rose to HK$15.67 billion ($2.01 billion), from HK$10.59 billion ($1.36 billion).
The company attributed the improvement in its profitability in the first half to strong performance in the Indian and Israeli markets.
The company’s Indian operation, Hutchison Essar, was the largest revenue contributor. It reported a first-half revenue rise of 51% to HK$7.09 billion ($1 billion), while its subscribers doubled to 17.5 million.
In Israel, Hutchison’s Partner Communications had a 5% rise before taxes to HK$1.51 billion ($148 million), on a “healthy increase” in its customer base and average minutes of use.
“Customer growth in the first half was in line with our expectations and, provided there is no slowing of the momentum in India, we expect that to continue in the second half,” Hutchison Telecom said in a statement.
The company’s business in the second half will depend largely on the timing of operation launches in Indonesia and Vietnam, both of which are scheduled for the second half of 2006, the company said.
Source- http://www.telecomasia.net
Technorati : Hutch, India, Israel, Mobile
Ice Rocket : Hutch, India, Israel, Mobile
