Net income was up by 20 per cent to US1.4 billion. Operating income was also up, by 24 per cent to US $1.55 billion.

Operating cash flow was US$1.78 billion, representing 38 per cent of revenues.

Mobile Station Mobile chipset shipments were 156 million units, up 32 per cent year-on-year and 23 per cent sequentially.

The licences were issued by former minister A Raja, who is accused of mis-selling bandwidth in what has been called India’s biggest corruption scandal. Raja denies wrongdoing.

Government auditors say the scandal cost the country about US$40 billion.

The judges also ordered a court to decide whether home minister P Chidambaram should be investigated. Opposition MPs accuse Chidambaram of failing to prevent the scandal when he was finance minister. He denies any wrongdoing.

Raja is currently on trial for fraud.

India is one of the world’s fastest growing markets for mobile telephones with 893 million subscriptions.

Reports say today’s verdict is likely to affect about five per cent of connections used by mobile phone customers.  India’s telecom regulator says the affected subscribers can be transferred to other mobile operators.  Some of the companies affected by the court order include Loop, Videocon, Idea Cellular, Tata Telecom, Uninor and Swan.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, Reuters said that Etisalat has invited bids for the tower assets.

The telco had been looking to sell the towers to another management company for around US$500 million, but sources indicated that a block sale of the entire portfolio proved difficult.

The company is now reported to be looking to sell its towers on a per-country basis.

“All actions and resolutions taken by the company since October 2003 at which Econet Wireless was entitled to be notified, and to participate in, as a shareholder, but was prohibited, are null and void,’ the judgement said. ‘This includes decisions to sell shares, issue shares, and also transfer shares to third parties.”

Econet said the judgement means the cellco’s name would revert to Econet Wireless Nigeria. “We have made it clear to the company, that as a shareholder, we would like to ensure that all actions that must be taken to comply with the court order are undertaken in such a way that there is minimal disruption to the ongoing operations of the company,” commented Econet Wireless Group chairman Strive Masiyiwa. “The board of Econet Wireless and I remain willing to sit down with Bharti Airtel, to review the best way forward for all parties. In the meantime, we have a fiduciary responsibility to take all of the necessary steps to vigorously protect the interests of our shareholders,” he added.

Laughing all the way to the bank – Strive Masiyiwa has his company’s five per cent stake claim to Airtel Nigeria affirmed by court (Image – courtesy of World Economic Forum)

Bharti Airtel has said it will appeal the court’s decision and that the judgement will have no impact on the equity holding of other shareholders in Airtel Nigeria.

The Indian telco inherited the legal case as part of its US$9 billion acquisition of Zain’s Africa operations in June 2010, including 65 per cent of Zain Nigeria.

Econet has always claimed that its five per cent stake in Econet Wireless Nigeria was cancelled following the takeover of the telco by Vodacom in 2003. Econet Wireless Nigeria was subsequently renamed Vee Networks and its brand name changed to Vodacom, but Vodacom pulled out of its contract soon after, citing ‘irregularities’ in the payment of the brokerage fees. Celtel International then purchased 65 per cent of the company in May 2006, a move that was disputed by Econet Wireless Limited, which claimed its pre-emption rights were breached. In 2009 Econet Wireless began moves to block the sale of Celtel’s (Zain) interests in Nigeria to Bharti Airtel until a ruling on the dispute over ownership of the company was passed. However, the takeover by the Indian firm was concluded in June 2010, with Zain Nigeria rebranded under the Airtel moniker by the end of the year.

A clause in the agreement between Bharti Airtel and Zain Group in the acquisition of the latter’s assets in Africa, was that Zain would be liable for any losses that may result from the ongoing litigation by Econet Wireless in Nigeria.

Oger Telecom also owns a 75 per cent stake in South Africa’s third mobile network, Cell C.

Citing sources familiar with the talks, Reuters said that Qatar – through its sovereign wealth fund – had made a direct approach to Saudi Oger about a deal.

Saudi Telecom Co. (STC) owns a 35 per cent stake in Oger Telecom, and has a right of first refusal if Saudi Oger were to look to sell its 55 per cent stake in the company.

The Qatar government also holds a majority stake in Qtel, although the deal is not thought to be involving the telco at this point.

This announcement marks the extension of the first managed services contract between Ericsson and MTN, originally signed in 2009 in connection to the rollout of MTN’s 3G network in Ghana. Under the extension, Ericsson is responsible for network operations, field maintenance and optimisation.

With 49 per cent market share, MTN is the leading operator in Ghana, which is one of Africa’s fastest growing telecom markets. In 2011, it grew by around 18 per cent to serve over 10 million subscribers.

· The differentiation of the customer experience

· The strengthening of the telco’s internal foundation

· Investment in new growth

“We have had significant success to date and our aspiration to join the top twenty global operators by the end of the decade remains important for us,” commented Nasser Marafih, Qtel Group CEO. “However, we recognise that the market is changing quickly and that we need to change with it. Our new vision and group strategy builds on our previous strategy and refines it by increasing our focus on differentiated customer experience, on transforming the way we manage our operations and embracing emerging and parallel business opportunities. At the same time, we will continue to set ourselves challenging financial targets.”

Marafih said in future the telco will increase its focus on broadband solutions, business-to-business opportunities, digital developments (TV, finance and health), as well as fibre technologies. At the same time the group will look to drive further operational and cost efficiency, productivity, and scale benefits while growing organisational and people capabilities.

Etisalat Nigeria’s Steven Evans (centre) says operators have been looking to launch new services while at the same time improving their operational efficiencies wherever possible

Etisalat’s plight in Nigeria mirrors that of many of the service providers across the content – a need to maintain revenue growth in a highly competitive market, while at the same time looking to operate more efficiently and manage costs better.

Etisalat Nigeria launched commercially in October 2008 and according to the company’s CEO Steven Evans, it counted 9.8 million subscribers as of October 2011. The cellco employs around 1,300 staff and by the end of 2011 is looking to have 3,000 base stations in place. It has been EBIT DA positive since the second half of 2011.

“There has been a 6-7 month hiatus due to the requirement for SIMS to be registered,” Steven Evans, CEO of Etisalat said while speaking at AfricaCom 2011 in Cape Town in the middle of November. “There are currently around 80 million active SIM s in the market place and we are effectively the fourth entrant.”

Nigeria’s telecom regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC ), began the SIM registration exercise in April with a view to closing it on September 28, 2011, six months after it began. An extension window has since been discussed, and the NCC is currently harmonising the results of the exercise with those of telecom operators in order to have a single database of telephone and Internet users in the country.

Given the vibrant competitive activity in the market, operators have been looking to launch new services while at the same time improving their operational efficiencies wherever possible. Etisalat for example has introduced DotMe, which permits subscribers to choose their number and has also launched a HomeZone service, allowing subscribers to set any location of their choice as their HomeZone and then going on to enjoy discounted calls every time they make a call from that zone.

“We also have CAPEX and OPEX reduction initiatives in place and these extend to activities such as tower sale and lease back, co-location, hybrid power, as well as transmission sharing,” Evans said. Commercially,

the operator has been working on its retail outlet formats as well as over-the-air (OTA ) recharging formats in order to streamline operations further.

In the Nigerian telecom context, it is clear that the CDMA businesses are ahead of the GSM players with respect to the tower sales and leaseback model, and Evans believe much can be learned from it. In August for example, Nigerian CDMA network operator, Visafone Communications agreed to sell and lease back 459 towers to infrastructure operator IHS Nigeria for an undisclosed amount.

The investment deal allowed IHS to further grow its portfolio of towers, and upon signing the agreement with Visafone, its second sale and lease back transaction, IHS CEO Issam Darwish, confirmed the company’s vision for further growth.

“We aim to become one of the leading pan-African telecom infrastructure solutions providers, and following this successful agreement we plan to further increase our Nigerian tower base to over 1,000 sites by the end of the year,” he said.

IHS is also the largest managed services provider in sub-Saharan Africa, with more than 3,500 sites under management.

“The plan is not to go as far as radio network (RAN ) sharing, but to consider the sharing of passive elements in the network, as well as colocation,” Evans described. Aside from the traditional challenges and opportunities within the telecom space, much discussion at AfricaCom 2011 also related to the runaway success of social media and social networks, and how best service providers could leverage and monetise that success. In South Africa for example, Facebook is said to be currently adding around 100,000 new subscribers a month.

Home-grown South African social networking sites such as MXit and 2Go are adding 40,000 and 30,000 new subscribers per month respectively, displaying the potential of locally-developed platforms and applications.

Vodacom continues to invest in its Vodacom live! portal, which it claims to be the most significant portal in South Africa with six million unique visitors a year

MXit allows users to send and receive one-on-one text and multimedia messages to and from other users, and in general chat rooms. MXit also supports gateways to other instant messaging platforms such as MSN Messenger, IC Q and Google Talk, and does not charge for one-on-one messages though mobile operators may charge for data usage. There are also a number of pay-services, including chatrooms.

The instant messaging (IM ) qualities of platforms such as MXit can be viewed as a potential revenue leakage from service providers’ messaging businesses, and while service providers do benefit from increased data and access usage, they do not get to participate fully in the premiums being enjoyed by the OTT social network players.

Thus the potential for branding and developing a strong following behind a social network, which then has communications elements within its functionality is significant, and justifiably making service providers somewhat nervous. Guinness Nigeria, for example, is one of the country’s most visible and celebrated brands. It commands one million subscribers on its social network platform alone, which is a quarter of the number of all Facebook subscribers in the country.

Despite the success of social networking having clearly evolved from the Internet, some telecom operators continue to try to exercise as much control over social interactions with their subscriber bases as possible. Vodacom continues to invest in its Vodacom live! portal, which it claims to be the most significant portal in South Africa with six million unique visitors a year.

“We launched our apps store on September 1, 2011, and had 140,000 free apps available at that time,” Prins Mhlanga, Vodacom’s managing executive of Digital Media said. “We want to keep things as open as possible and work with other platforms such as Java, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android,” he added.

In the middle of December the cellco announced the launch of premium apps in the Vodacom App Store. The premium apps range from ZAR 5 (US$0.62) to ZAR 50.

The Vodacom App Store counted over five thousand premium apps that have been added to the Vodacom App Store since launch.

“The customer uptake of free apps was fantastic with over 500,000 downloads in the first three months of launch. We believe the market is ready to experience premium apps,” Mhlanga said at the announcement of premium apps.

Many industry commentators still regard operator-developed portals such as Vodacom live! as widely unsuccessful.

The committed facilities are comprised in equal parts of a revolving credit facility maturing in June 2015 and a term loan facility that matures in June 2013. They will be used for general corporate purposes.

The facilities were signed on December 21, 2011.

Motorola shipped 10.5 million mobile devices during the period, including 5.3 million smartphones and 200,000 tablets. This compares with 11.3 million devices, with 4.9 million smartphones, in Q410.

For the full year, Motorola reported a net loss of US$249 million, compared with a prior-year loss of US$86 million, on revenue of US$13.1 billion, up 14 per cent.

North America remains Motorola’s largest market, accounting for 48 per cent of sales during the period. Other significant markets for Motorola in Q4 were Latin America (22 per cent) and Greater China (15 per cent).
In a statement, Sanjay Jha, chairman and CEO of Motorola said that “we remain energised by the proposed merger with Google and continue to focus on creating innovative technologies.”