Navteq is a provider of comprehensive digital map data for automotive navigation systems, mobile navigation devices, Internet-based mapping applications, and government and business solutions. Last October Nokia announced a move to acquire the Chicago-based mapping company, and given the handset manufacturer’s belief that contextualisation is becoming an increasingly integral part of social and commercial interactions, the ubiquity of location-based services has never been so compelling

“There were 25 million handsets sold in Europe, Middle East and Africa, which supported global positioning systems (GPS),” says Serge Bussat, Navteq’s vice president and general manager of Consumer and Wireless Europe. “This number is forecast to rise to 79 million in 2009, showing the strong market take-up of portable location-based service services and applications,” he adds.

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Comm. goes in search of the beating heart of the Africa telecoms scene and discovers the sector has never been in better health

In this extract from a GSM Association report entitled, Mobile Investment Africa, the organisation’s senior vice president, Gabriel Solomon, considers the phenomenal expansion of the mobile telecoms sector on the continent, as well as its challenges.

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In a striking move that further liberalises Oman’s telecoms sector, the regulator announced on October 25 that the winning bidder for the country’s second fixed-line licence was the PCCW-Awaser Oman consortium, and not the second mobile operator, Nawras, as had been widely expected. With fixed-line phone penetration in Oman standing at 10 per cent, and Internet penetration at a mere three per cent, Michelle Mills takes a look at PCCW, Hong Kong’s integrated telecoms provider and what the sultanate of 2.75 million stands to gain from the company’s extensive experience in broadband, quad-play and IPTV

With more than 2.5 million fixed-lines and one million broadband customers in its home market of seven million people in Hong Kong, PCCW was always in a strong position to export its successful business formula to other markets, especially when pure fixed-line numbers are diminishing in many countries. As well as international presence in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas, mainland China and other parts of Asia through its subsidiaries, combined with a fattened purse, the Asian operator commands attention in markets it decides to enter.

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Strategic lapses and a convoluted shareholder structure have meant Vodacom has failed to extend the leadership position it enjoys in its domestic market of South Africa to significant parts of Africa. In the company’s first change of leadership since it launched services in May 1993, incoming chief executive, Pieter Uys, describes how a converged strategy and the embrace of the economic, technological and regulatory transformation occurring across Africa and the world, is set to drive Vodacom’s long-awaited ascension to the top tier of pan-African communications providers

Pieter Uys, incoming CEO of Vodacom Group

Vodacom, South Africa’s 25 million-strong network operator, stands at the precipice of fundamental change that will either catapult it to the heights of Africa’s telecoms market, or perpetuate its inability to press its domestic advantage into other parts of the African continent.

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