South Africa’s Telkom plans to introduce a new brand, Telkom Mobile, which will largely replace the existing 8ta name it uses for its mobile unit.

The news emerged via a letter sent by Attila Vitai, the mobile unit’s managing director, to employees, which was subsequently leaked to the media.

The letter emphasised the importance of convergence between the operator’s fixed and mobile businesses, which was described as being “a critical focus area of the Telkom strategy”.

“I am excited to announce that a decision has been taken that the 8ta brand will progressively be changed to Telkom Mobile,” wrote Vitai.

However, the company subsequently issued a statement clarifying the future of the 8ta brand. The statement said the name will not completely disappear but instead will be “repositioned into specific market segments”.

The statement said the 8ta brand had been particularly popular in the youth market.

New propositions will be developed and delivered using the 8ta brand, said the telco, although it did not offer more details. Further information will be communicated in due course, it said.

Telkom’s mobile unit is the smallest of the country’s four operators. According to Wireless Intelligence, it counted 1.55 million subscribers at end-2012, a figure significantly behind nearest rival Cell C and dwarfed by market leaders MTN and Vodacom.

Zimbabwe’s telecom regulator is working on replacing the current mobile licences with universal concessions when they come up for renewal later this year.

The government is making the necessary changes to the law to allow POTRAZ to issue the new licences, and expects to have the work completed by June.

The deadline of June is important as that is when Econet and Telecel’s existing licences expire and need to be renewed.

POTRAZ also recently announced that the country ended last year with 12.6 million active SIM cards – representing a population penetration level of 97 per cent.

Zain Group has today announced that it will pilot Rich Communications Services (RCS) under the Joyn initiative launched by the GSM Association. This makes Zain Group the first operator group to pilot Joyn in the Middle East.

RCS is a major advancement by the operator community to compete more effectively with the over-the-top players. It enables services such as enhanced messaging and voice, video calling and content sharing directly from a phone’s contact book, regardless of the network or device used. Joyn is a global initiative to deploy inter-operator RCS and Zain is gaining access to it through its relationship with Vodafone, with which it has a Partner Market agreement.

Zain is set to pilot Joyn in the Middle East in order to assess its suitability and compatibility with local conditions.

Joyn has been piloted and introduced by a number of leading mobile operators around the world, and Zain is keen to have the platform piloted in the Middle East as soon as possible.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) telecom sector is extremely diverse, with advanced communications markets sitting alongside less developed ones. However, the demand for high-speed mobile broadband access and digital content is a consistent theme across the region, and Pierre Chaume, Alcatel-Lucent’s VP for MENA offers his impressions of the dynamics at play there

Pierre Chaume, Alcatel-Lucent’s VP for MENA, is confident of the company’s prospects in the region in 2013

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Qatar Telecom reported a 14.6 per cent rise in fourth-quarter profit as higher revenue in its home market, Indonesia and Iraq offset declining earnings from Kuwaiti unit Wataniya and Oman’s Nawras.

Qtel, which recently renamed itself Ooredoo, made a net profit of QAR523 million (US$143.7 million) in the three months to end-December, up from QAR456 million in the year-earlier period.

Ooredoo, which operates in 16 countries across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, said it would pay a cash dividend of QAR5 per share.

Full-year domestic revenue rose nine per cent to exceed QAR6 billion, while revenue from Indonesia unit Indosat increased three per cent to QAR8.8 billion.

Full-year group revenue reached QAR33.7 billion, up 6.2 per cent year-on-year.

Ooredoo has spent approximately US$3.9 billion in the past 12 months upping its stakes in some foreign units, taking majority control of Iraq’s Asiacell, while it now owns 90 per cent or more of Kuwait’s Wataniya, through which it holds controlling stakes in operators in Tunisia and Algeria.

Asiacell’s full-year revenue rose 15.9 per cent to QAR6.9 billion from a year earlier.

Wataniya, Kuwait’s No.2 operator reported a 26.5 per cent drop in fourth-quarter profit last month that it blamed on tougher competition at home and foreign exchange losses in Tunisia and Algeria.

In January, Omani subsidiary Nawras posted a fourth straight decline in quarterly profit as falling revenue from texts and on-network calls weighed on its bottom line.

Ooredoo made an annual net profit of QAR2.94 billion in 2012, up from QAR2.61 billion in 2011.

Fourth-quarter revenue was QAR8.71 billion, up from 8.19 billion a year earlier.