Saudi Arabia’s STC yesterday launched operations in Bahrain under the Viva brand, accompanied by heavily reduced tariffs to entice new customers.

Saud Al-Duwaish, CEO of the STC Group announced Viva customers will be able to take advantage of broadband services for free, calls to other Viva or STC subscribers at no cost, as well as enjoying up to 90 per cent reduction on international calls. This promotion is open to all Viva customers for the first three months.

The company plans to distinguish itself through a modern communications network that is not only the most sophisticated in the region, but also at a global level. Viva’s network is based on the HSPA+ technology that will allow it to provide all of Bahrain with high-speed broadband, which the company says is the fastest in the region allowing up to 21.1 megabits per second.

Viva is the third operator in Bahrain after Batelco and Zain Bahrain. The Saudi operator won the country’s third licence in March 2009 with a bid of US$231 million.

STC Group, the largest regional operator by market value has more than 100 million subscribers in Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Kuwait, Turkey, South Africa, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Fitch Ratings has affirmed Motorola’s debt ratings with a negative outlook. Fitch’s actions affect approximately US$5.4 billion of total debt, including the assumption of a fully drawn US$1.5 billion revolving credit facility.

The issuer default rating (IDR) has been rated ‘BBB-‘, the senior secured revolving credit facility at ‘BBB’, senior unsecured notes at ‘BBB-‘, and short-term IDR and commercial paper program rating at ‘F3’.

The ratings and negative outlook reflect Fitch’s expectations that revenue growth in 2010 will likely be reliant upon the timely introduction of the company’s mobile devices business (MDB) and market acceptance of a substantial number of new smartphone models. However, MDB should benefit from significant headcount reductions and platform operating efficiencies implemented in 2009. As such, Fitch expects the MDB unit to generally be around free cash flow breakeven for the year in comparison to significant cash usage over the prior two years.

Fitch believes revenue growth within Motorola’s Enterprise Mobility Solutions (EMS) and Home and Networks (H&N) segments will likely be flattish in 2010, pressured by weak consumer spending and housing starts in the US, as well as tepid enterprise spending.

Overall, Fitch expects Motorola to generate positive consolidated free cash flow in 2010 after taking into account severance payments and incremental expenses associated with the spin-off. Funding for the company’s pension shortfall could ramp up in 2011. Free cash flow expectations also take into account the company maintaining meaningfully lower than historical inventory levels, which could prove challenging given MDB’s plan to launch at least 20 new smartphone models in 2010. Fitch estimates that the company generated more than US$1.3 billion of its US$240 million of free cash flow in 2009 from inventory reductions.

The ratings and outlook also reflect Fitch’s belief that the consummation of the proposed separation of MDB and Home from EMS and Networks in the first quarter of 2011 will be contingent upon MDB achieving its objective of introducing as many as 20 new smartphone models and achieving market acceptance. Fitch believes that MDB’s failure to do so could undermine the company’s smartphone strategy and product roadmap, resulting in free cash flow usage for 2010 and potentially delaying the proposed separation.

The Kuwait Stock Exchange plans to probe heavy trading of Zain stock that occurred the day prior to the announcement of Bharti Airtel entering talks to purchase Zain’s African assets, reports local press. It is questioned whether leaked information influenced stock trading before the deal was officially announced and benefited certain parties.

Zain confirmed on February 14 that it had received an offer from Bharti Airtel for US$10.7 billion for the African operations, excluding Sudan and Morocco. The two companies are in exclusive talks until March 25.

Zain Africa, formerly branded Celtel, includes approximately 42 million subscribers and represents around 58 per cent of the operator’s customers as of end-September 2009. Bharti Airtel is India’s largest operator and has almost 125 million subscribers across India.

Saudi Arabia’s STC announced it has exceeded 100 million subscribers worldwide, however, a breakdown of subscribers by country has not been disclosed by the operator.

The Arab world’s largest telecom company by market value has expanded aggressively in the past two years outside the kingdom’s borders to now have operations in Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, India, South Africa, Kuwait and Bahrain. The operator’s most recent foray was the launch of mobile services in Bahrain under the brand Viva.

STC posted a Q409 net profit of SAR 2.94 billion (US$784 million), an increase of 154 per cent year-on-year from SAR 1.16 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. The state-owned integrated operator attributed this partly to the floating in November of a 25 per cent stake in Malaysian subsidiary Maxis, which added SAR 684 million to its coffers.

India will conduct the auction for the much-anticipated 3G spectrum on April 9, the government has stated. Applications from prospective bidders are open until March 19. Pre-qualified bidders will be announced on March 30, followed by mock auctions on April 5 and 6.

Two days following the completion of the 3G bandwidth auction, the sale of broadband wireless access services will begin.

Despite the promising news, operators and analysts can be excused if feeling somewhat sceptical if the auction will actually take place, as the auctions have already been delayed three times since the original date of January 16, 2009. The postponements were due to internal government disputes over pricing and availability of spectrum.

The government hopes the expected INR 350 billion (US$7.6 billion) in revenues from the 3G auction will help stem its fiscal deficit, which has reached a 16-year high.

Analysts estimate individual operators could outlay between US$1-1.5 billion for India-wide spectrum, while the actual 3G network rollout could cost billions more. The country’s top three operators – Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications and Vodafone Essar, have all indicated their appetite for a slice of the 3G pie, while Telenor’s Uninor has also showed interest in 3G licences for specific circles.