The Ericsson Media Summit held in Beirut at the end of November brought together telecom professionals and students from around the Middle East region for a discussion of the ICT drivers at play. Ericsson emphasised the need for private and public sectors to become fully aware of the significant gains the digital dividend offers and to take steps towards developing the necessary enabling environment

Anders Lindblad, Ericsson’s president of Region Middle East, offers insights on the drivers of the telecom sector in the Middle East

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Kuwait cellco, Viva says it launched its LTE network last week, making it the first network in the country to offer the service.

Viva CEO Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Badran said the LTE technology will cover selected central areas in Kuwait at the beginning, with coverage to expand in the near future to cover all areas.

He also stated that the cellco will continue investing in LTE going forward.

Turkish cellco, Turkcell is reported to have signed loan agreements with China Development Bank for the potential purchase of Huawei products and services worth up to US$250 million.

The loan is for capital investments during 2012 and 2013.

The financing, which is composed of two equal loans with respective tenors of five and seven years, has an all-in cost of approximately libor + 3% per annum.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has been instructed to ensure the long-delayed 3G licence auction takes place within the next three months, local media sources report.

PTA officials said that they have made all preparations for the 3G licence auction and would be inviting bids soon.

One option will see the offer of up to 10MHz of radio spectrum per licence, with the government expecting to earn between US$240-US$800 million. A second option would be to offer fewer licences in blocks of 20-35MHz, generating estimated revenue of between US$750 million-US$1.2 billion.

Although the licence process is expected to be decided on shortly, the concessions themselves might not be available until 2013. This is due to an agreement entered into by the government not to offer any additional radio spectrum, as part of its deal to sell a 26 per cent stake in state-owned Pakistan Telecommunications Company to Etisalat in 2006.

The Pakistan government has decided to ban mobile number portability in the country, citing alleged threats to national security, although quite how it could be was not made clear.

A meeting between the government and the regulator was reported to have agreed that criminals are using unregistered SIM cards – despite a ban on selling SIM cards without verifying the identity of the purchaser.

As a result of the meeting, the regulator is to clamp down on the sale of unregistered SIMs – and also agreed to block future MNP requests.

MNP was originally introduced into the country in April 2007. Telcordia provides the clearing house software for the service.

The recently delayed decision to implement a censorship system on text messages was again confirmed as going ahead once the networks are ready.