Etisalat is close to finalising a deal to secure a majority stake in Iraq’s Korek Telecom, Etisalat’s chairman Mohammed Omran has announced. The UAE operator has been in discussions with Korek since September 2008.

Currently there are three operators in Iraq – Zain, Qtel subsidiary Asiacell and Korek. Korek holds a national licence, however its coverage is limited to mainly the northern part of the country and has long needed outside investment to fund network expansion.

Omran also stated the operator may seek to raise funding through bonds to fuel expansion into a further six markets outside its current 18 operations, including Algeria and Libya. An opportunity exists to enter Algeria through Orascom Telecom’s subsidiary Djezzy, with the Algerian government reportedly wanting Orascom to surrender its investment.

Etisalat has more than 100 million subscribers across its footprint in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and hopes to increase international revenues from currently 10 per cent to 20 per cent within the next three years. The firm remains the Gulf region’s second largest telecoms firm by market value.

The New Generation Telecoms consortium has been announced the winner of 75 per cent of Nigeria’s state-owned incumbent Nitel, with the bid of US$2.5 billion. The consortium comprises Nigeria’s GiCell Wireless, a relatively unknown telecoms firm within in the country, China Unicom as technical partner and Dubai’s Minerva Group. The consortium has 10 days to pay 30 per cent of the fee and a further 50 days to pay the balance if it is to secure its stake in Nitel.

The shareholding up for offer includes Nitel’s mobile arm Mtel and its fibre-optic cable division SAT-3, which links Africa with Europe and the rest of the world.

The other bidders were led by Omen International Limited (BVI), a company registered in the British Virgin Islands and which was announced the reserve bidder with an offer of US$956.98 million, more than US$1.5 billion below New Generation’s bid.

The others named include Brymedia Consortium which bid US$551 million, AFZI/Spectrum Consortium and MTN Nigeria Communications, which bid US$25 million for SAT-3 only. MTN Nigeria Communication and local mobile operator Globacom were previously excluded from bidding fully for the ailing incumbent.

The government’s privitisation move has received criticism for not learning from mistakes of the past, and opening up too much to foreign investment.

The federal government sold a 51 per cent stake in Nitel to local conglomerate Transcorp in 2006, retaining a 49 per cent interest. Since then the telco’s initial 500,000 fixed lines in service had dropped to about 45,000, and racked up a significant amount of debt.

In February Transcorp was made to start divesting its shareholding in the telco and in March the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) announced it was offering a 51 per cent stake in the fixed line operator and 100 per cent of its mobile unit. In May Nigeria’s anti-corruption police charged the head of Transcorp, Tom Iseghohi and two other employees with fraud for allegedly embezzling around US$110 million belonging to Nitel, revoking the sale of Nitel to Transcorp altogether.

A new report by the Arab Advisors Group shows that by the end of 2009, 29 operators across 13 Arab countries offered 3G/3.5G mobile services. Additionally, more operators are expected to commercially launch in 2010 including Orange Jordan, Tunisie Orange Telecom and Wataniya Mobile in Palestine.

The most popular third generation services offered were mobile Internet, followed by video calling and mobile TV.  Arab Advisors senior research analyst Danya Nusseir, stated that all operators offered mobile Internet, 22 operators offered video calling, while mobile TV is offered by 13 operators.

Nusseir added that by the end of last year, Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia and Yemen were the Arab countries without commercial 3G/3.5G services.

Vodafone will deploy the hugely-successful M-PESA mobile banking service in South Africa, the operator has announced.

The M-PESA service was developed by Vodafone and has already been deployed by Safaricom in Kenya – where it has become a flagship model for m-commerce services, Vodafone in Tanzania and Roshan in Afghanistan. More than 11 million subscribers already use the M-PESA mobile money service.

The operator plans to serve the approximately 26 million people in South Africa without official bank accounts. Currently roughly 60 per cent of residents use formal bank accounts, whereas the mobile penetration rate among the adult population is more than 94 per cent.

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Paying the piper – mobile-assisted banking

Iraqi mobile operator Asiacell, part of the Qtel group, has signed a strategic agreement with a consortium of banks called Amwal to offer mobile money services in Iraq.

Under the terms of the agreement, Asiacell will be the first mobile company in the country to provide advanced commercial banking and transaction services accessed via mobile phones. Prepaid customers will be able to use their handsets to directly purchase airtime, buy goods and services from registered merchants, check their bank account balances, and make mobile-to-mobile and bank account-to-bank account money transfers.

All transactions will be linked directly with subscribers’ bank accounts at Amwal member banks, using a highly-secure, reliable transaction system.

Asiacell provides network coverage for all of the country’s provinces and serves more than seven million subscribers. It is the largest private Iraqi company.