As mobile penetration deepens in emerging markets to reach customers at the lowest socioeconomic level, the value added services (VAS) that will be attractive to this segment and how they will be used will be very different to how more affluent consumers have in the past. Working with 100 operators in 70 countries across Middle East, Africa, South East Asia and India, Bharti Telesoft’s CEO, Manoranjan ‘Mao’ Mohapatra shares with Michelle Mills his insight and experience into the challenges and special requirements in providing content to the next billion mobile customers

In India, we have about 30 per cent teledensity. As operators try to increase that towards 60 per cent, they are reaching out to a segment of the population that requires services that are not language dependent. Operators cannot assume that a user has the ability to read and write any more,” Mohapatra asserts.

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Turkey is a country that straddles the east and west, incorporating European, Asian and Middle East cultures. Often classified as belonging to the wider Middle East, it is the region’s largest single telecom markets counting over 60 million mobile subscribers. Despite this large number of users, the country only recently awarded 3G licences, with the three incumbent mobile operators expected to launch services in the middle of 2009

In November, the Telecom Authority of Turkey announced that the country’s largest mobile operator Turkcell had won the largest block of 3G spectrum or ‘A licence’ with a bid amounting to US$462 million. The reserve price for the concession had been set at US$405 million.

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The prognosis for the major equipment suppliers in 2009 is not good, but despite this Motorola’s Ali Amer and Noel Kirkaldy consider the vendor’s prospects for the year ahead in the Middle East and Africa positively. LTE, WiMAX and FTTx are amongst the reasons why Motorola believes its has made the right technology bets, from which it will weather the global economic storm

In his many years in the telecoms sector, Ali Amer, vice president for the Middle East and Africa for Motorola’s home and mobility business unit, has never seen a global economic slump set to have such an impact on the telecoms sector. He takes some consolation in the belief that the effects of the slowdown will be more heavily felt in North America and Europe than they will be in the Middle East and Africa region. That is not to say Amer believes the MEA region will be without its very real challenges.

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The annual GSM-3G Middle East conference brings together the region’s stakeholders in an atmosphere of honest information exchange and strategic reflection. While this year’s event was somewhat muted by the ongoing financial crisis, insights were offered into broadband, branding and the requirement to know the needs of one’s customer better at this point than at any other time in the past

Etisalat’s chief corporate affairs officer Nasser Bin Obood believes it is time for the UAE’s telecoms regulator, TRA to allow the operator to exercise greater flexibility with respect to the setting of competitive tariffs. Given Etisalat’s incumbent position in the UAE, the telco is deemed to have significant market power and as such has its pricing plans and tariffs heavily regulated by the TRA.

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At the time of going to press, Nortel had not yet officially responded to the notice it received from the New York Stock Exchange with respect to what the Canadian vendor was going to do about its depressed share price, which has traded below US$1.00 in value for several months, against NYSE rules. While some of Nortel’s problems are quite specific to the vendor, others are more general to the telecoms equipment manufacturing sector, and Comm. reviews the level of trouble for other suppliers

Nortel CEO Zafirovski is under pressure and running out of time as his options to keep the vendor afloat appear to be narrowing rapidly

Beleaguered telecoms vendor Nortel continues to fight for its survival, having been forced to review its stock market listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), given its depressed stock price. In an email to Nortel staff seen by Comm., Ronald Alepian, the vendor’s vice president of corporate communications confirmed last month that on December 10 the vendor had received notice from the NYSE that Nortel’s stock had fallen below the continued listing standards.

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