Philippe Vogeleer is set to leave Orange Jordan, having joined the company in March 2006. He is currently chief strategy officer and secretary general, and has played an instrumental role in building the telco up into an integrated operator under the Orange brand name.

Vogeleer says he is set to remain in the region, taking up a position with another telecom group within the GCC.

Friendi Mobile, the Middle East’s leading mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) reported that it had reached the 150,000 subscriber milestone in Oman in early March. Its subscriber base accounts for around four per cent of all mobile subscribers in the country, and Friendi Group CEO, Mikkel Vinter believes there is further growth to be enjoyed in the market.

“We are pleased to have achieved this number of users in 10 months of operation,” Vinter commented. “Our target from day one has been a market share in Oman in the upper end of the single-digit percentages, and I believe we are well on track to achieving that.”

Oman is the first market in the Gulf in which mobile resellers have been launched commercially. Jordan shall be the next

The crowded mobile reseller market in Oman, which has five licensed players, three of which are operational, is already starting to separate the players that have a likely future from the ones that may not. At a conference held in Dubai in the middle of March, Mohammed Alhashili, CEO of Mazoon Mobile disappointed the audience by not detailing the reseller’s operational performance since launching in Oman in December 2009 as the country’s third mobile reseller.

Alhashili offered no detail with regards to the number of subscribers the operator has added or the company’s ARPU, saying the reseller required more time to establish its business before revealing such details.

Unconfirmed reports from Oman suggest Mazoon Mobile has added around 15,000 subscribers since launch, and given its strategy to offer deferred credits to subscribers who sign up, is believed to be finding participation in the market challenging.

The UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) today announced that it has revised the Voice over IP (“VoIP”) Regulatory Policy, allowing licensees (Etisalat and Du) to offer a greater range of VoIP services.

The revised policy also exempts certain usages from its provisions, for example, for UAE academic and governmental institutions.

The latest revisions allow the widening use of VoIP in the UAE, but still tie them to the country’s two licensed operators. The provision of third-party VoIP services remains illegal. The TRA made it clear that as is the case with other telecom services in the UAE, parties other than the licensees may not provide VoIP services.

Etisalat and Du may provide VoIP services as:

(1) An end-to-end voice service (as in the traditional telephony);  

(2) As a “feature” on top of connectivity service; or

(3) In any other form that the licensee may wish to provide

In the middle of January, Dubai-based mobile virtual network operator Friendi Mobile entered into an agreement with Zain’s Jordanian unit to launch services in the country. This marks the second country in the region, and the second that Friendi has been able to agree MVNO terms, suggesting the tide may be turning for mobile resellers in the Middle East

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The reporting of Q4 and full-year financial results for 2009 has been a highly anticipated time given the economic turbulence experienced during the course of last year. A sample of results from the region and other emerging markets confirms the resilience of the telecom sector, driven mainly by mobile and broadband operations, and augers well for the year ahead as operators seek to drive new revenue streams

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