Authors
Indian and Chinese investors are making their play for Africa
As the great and good of the mobile industry browsed the exhibits at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona this week, they may have overlooked a couple of watershed moments in emerging-market telecoms.
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The Middle East and Africa offer some of the best regional prospects for WiMAX
The prospects for WiMAX seemed to have dimmed somewhat in the past couple of years as a result of the strong growth of HSPA, which is often seen as a rival to WiMAX, and a recession that has reduced the appetite for the spending necessary to build networks.
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Middle East operators are seeking economies of scale
As the Middle East’s mobile markets mature, and with the impact of the recession still raw, many of the region’s operators are becoming more cost-conscious.
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African operators are focusing on data services
At Informa Telecoms & Media’s Africacom conference in Cape Town earlier this month, it was apparent that major operators across the continent are looking more to data and other value-added services to stimulate future expansion, as the strong growth in mobile subscription count seen in the past few years begins to slow.
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Saudi Arabia is feeling the heat of competition
Saudi Arabia remains the biggest prize in the Gulf region for telecoms operators and vendors.
Although the more-populous Iran has overtaken Saudi Arabia in terms of mobile subscription numbers, Saudi Arabia has the largest economy in the region and a substantial population, of 24.6 million.
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Confusion reigns over M&A in the Middle East and Africa
Progress on the region’s big M&A deals – the prospective sale of Zain Africa or a stake in Zain; and the cash and share-swap deal between Bharti and MTN – appears to have stalled.
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Zain’s African safari could be coming to an end
All good things must come to an end, and it looks as if Zain’s African adventure might be drawing to a close. There is little doubt that Zain is considering the sale of its operations in sub-Saharan Africa, or at least of a stake in those operations.
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Tougher market conditions are forcing operators in West and Central Africa to innovate
The telecoms market in West and Central Africa remains vibrant, but the message from last week’s West & Central Africa Com conference, organized in Abuja, Nigeria, by Informa Telecoms & Media, is that business is getting tougher for operators as a consequence of
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Could nationalism threaten telecoms globalization?
If globalization can be defined as the lowering of barriers to the exchange between countries of goods, services and investment, as well as ideas and behaviours, then telecoms is both a vehicle for advancing globalization as well as an example of it.
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The arrival of submarine cables will transform the East African telecoms market
East Africa currently has no submarine cable connections to the rest of the world, and as a result all international Internet connectivity in the region depends on expensive satellite services.
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Analyst
Matthew Reed
Matthew Reed is editor of Informa's Mobile Middle East & Africa Intelligence Centre.
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