Samatel, Oman’s latest mobile reseller announced the launch of its services for residential and business customers on August 23. It becomes the fourth of five licensed resellers in the sultanate to introduce services.

“Samatel is a brand new concept in the sultanate, during our planning phase we went to the drawing board and decided that we don’t want to do different things but rather we will do things differently,” commented the founder and chairman Sheikh Khalid Al Mataa’ni.

Samatel is making use of an operating and technology platform provided by Effortel, a mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE).

“Samatel is 100 per cent Omani owned, has access to a country wide network of 400 retail outlets and our customers are supported locally,” said Wael Taher, the company’s CEO.

The prospects for success for Samatel, which purchases capacity from Nawras, remain questionable given the relatively small size of the Omani telecom market and the presence of a number of resellers ahead of it, a number of which have had more than a year’s head start operationally.

Phuthuma Nhleko, MTN Group’s president and CEO since 2002 is set to stand down as of March 31, 2011. He has been instrumental in driving the South Africa mobile operator to the apex of the industry on the continent, leaving whoever is selected to succeed him with a colossal legacy to continue

The replacement of outgoing MTN Group CEO, Phuthuma Nhleko is set to be confirmed in the coming month or two. Nhleko’s tenure ends March 2011

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Rumours that Egypt’s Naguib Sawiris is in talks with Russia’s VimpelCom have resurrected again after sources told Bloomberg News that the two companies are now looking at a merger of their assets. The combined company would be valued at more than US$25 billion, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

According to the report, Sawiris would become a significant minority investor in the new enlarged company, which would include his Weather Investments’ 51 per cent stake in Orascom Telecom Holding and Italian mobile operator Wind Telecommunications.

There had been reports earlier this month that VimpelCom was in talks with Naguib Sawiris to buy Italy’s Wind Telecommunications and a 51 per cent stake in Orascom Telecom on a deal that would be worth around US$6.5 billion. That deal was denied in a statement to the stock exchange which was carefully worded to leave open other options.

The transaction would create an entity with a combined total mobile subscriber base of more than 200 million customers.

VimpelCom was formed from the merger of assets owned by Russia’s Alfa Group and Norway’s Telenor. VimpelCom is 39.6 per cent owned by Telenor while Alfa’s Altimo unit controls 39.2 per cent and minority shareholders own 21.2 per cent.

MTN Group today reported financial results for the six months ended June 30, revealing an 11.4 per cent increase in aggregate users, to 129.2 million subscribers. Group revenue, however, decreased by 2.2 per cent to ZAR56.0 billion (US$7.7 billion) year-on-year, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) decreased by 1.1 per cent to ZAR24.2 billion compared to the same period a year earlier. The operator said first-half profit increased 6.2 per cent to ZAR8.1 billion.

MTN announced it would pay an interim dividend for the first time as it signalled a change from its strategy of recent years to expand through major acquisitions, after posting higher first half net profit.

MTN, which in the past 12 months has had to walk away from talks with Bharti Airtel and Egypt’s Orascom Telecom, will pay a maiden interim dividend of 151 cents a share and increase its total annual dividend payout to 40 per cent of adjusted earnings per share.

MTN’s South and East Africa unit was the only operation to report an increase in revenue for the period: ZAR20.56 billion up from ZAR19.4 billion a year ago, an increase of six per cent. By contrast, MTN’s West and Central Africa operation saw revenues decline from ZAR26.76 billion to ZAR24.72 billion year-on-year – a decrease of 7.6 per cent.

The Middle East and North Africa region witnessed a revenue decrease from ZAR11.06 billion to ZAR10.66 billion for the same period, representing a slide of 3.6 per cent. The West and Central Africa operation counted the largest subscriber share for the period, with 59.36 million customers. In the Middle East and North Africa MTN reported 41.19 million subscribers, whilst the group’s South and East African operation counted 28.66 million users.

“The MTN Group delivered a sound operational performance for the six months ended June 30. This was the result of a solid performance in all aspects of the business, aided by high quality networks, robust and competitive distribution channels, attractive segmented product offerings and an increased focus on value added services,” commented group president and CEO Phuthuma Nhleko.

Motorola’s networks business had been preparing to forge a path as an independent entity prior to the announcement by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) in the middle of July that the latter was to acquire the majority of Motorola’s wireless networks infrastructure assets. In one of his last interviews prior to the announcement, Ali Amer, Motorola Networks’ vice president and general manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa told Comm. why the business remained in a strong position

Ali Amer, Motorola Networks’ vice president and general manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa

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