Egyptian mobile operator Mobinil recorded a fourth quarter net profit of EGP 581 million (US$106 million), a growth of 5.4 per cent from the same quarter a year earlier. Revenues reached EGP 2.8 billion with EBITDA of EGP 1.32 billion.

Annual net profit for 2009 increased three per cent year-on-year to EGP 2.04 billion (US$371.5 million), while revenues grew eight per cent to EGP 10.81 billion. Full-year EBITDA reached EGP 5.122 million, an increase of nine per cent over 2008.

Subscriber numbers increased to 25.354 million by the end of December 2009, an addition of 5.24 million subscribers or growth of 26 per cent from a year earlier.

"The year 2009 was filled with intense challenges and adverse conditions driven by the global economic
crisis and aggressive competition," Mobinil Chairman Alex Shalaby said in the earnings statement. “I am really delighted to see the level of growth achieved given the tough conditions we operated under during the year.

The operator has been engaged in an ownership dispute between its two main shareholders, Egypt’s Orascom Telecom and France Telecom (FT). A detailed ruling is expected within the coming week, after an administrative court previously blocked the regulator’s decision for FT to purchase outstanding shares in the Egyptian Company for Mobile Services (ECMS), which operates under the Mobinil brand name.

India’s largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, has awarded Nokia Siemens Network a US$700 million network expansion contract. The vendor will expand and upgrade Airtel’s 2.5G network to increase network capacity by 50 per cent in eight telecommunications circles.

The GSM expansion will cover the circles of Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand, Orissa, Kolkata and West Bengal, where Nokia Siemens Networks already provides equipment and managed services for the telco. With almost 60 percent of Airtel’s monthly customers coming from rural regions, this contract will enable it to further aggressively expand its footprint into rural India.

“This expansion will not only expand our networks deeper into the rural hinterland but will also allow us to deliver a rich end-user experience, and satisfy the increasing demand for top-quality services,” said Sanjay Kapoor, chief executive officer designate, Bharti Airtel.

NSN’S contract includes network planning, implementation and project management, handling of local logistics and materials, as well as system integration for the base station sites. In addition, the company will ensure that the operator’s core and transport network is 3G-ready in order to reduce time to market and enable the fast rollout of 3G services at a later date.

Bharti Airtel Limited, a group company of Bharti Enterprises, is among Asia’s leading integrated telecom services providers with operations in India and Sri Lanka, and in January it gained the approval to acquire 70 per cent of Warid Bangladesh. In South Asia, the company had an aggregate of over 125.3 million customers as of end-December 2009, including 120.23 million mobile customers.

MTN Group, Vodacom and Cell C all intend to reduce interconnection rates across the board on March 1, whether the country’s telecoms regulator approves the proposal or not.

Cell C’s had of regulatory affairs Nadia Bulbulia told South African TV the mobile companies plan to resubmit a proposal to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa this week (ICASA). ICASA rebuffed the operators’ original plan.

Under the suggested scheme, the three operators will reduce peak rates charged to connect phone calls between networks from 1.25 rand to 89 cents (US$0.11). Off-peak rates would remain at 77 cents.

France Telecom (FT) has further extended its footprint in Africa after winning the bid to manage state-owned monopoly Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation (ETC). The European operator edged out South Africa’s MTN and India’s BSNL in the bidding process.

According to a government official, negotiations are continuing between FT and ETC, with the French firm expected to finalise the revenue sharing agreement and take over management within three months. FT operates in 15 markets across Africa and the Middle East, operating under the brand name Orange.

As part of the deal, FT will reform the Ethiopian company’s core operations, including service provision and infrastructural maintenance, and will seek to raise revenues by creating new markets.

India’s Economic Times reports that according to sources familiar with the matter, although state-owned BSNL made a higher financial offer than the French operator, it did not qualify due to other some other criteria, including operational performance in its home market. BSNL has steadily been losing market share to private operators and as of the end of 2009 commanded only 11 per cent market share in India.

Recent subscriber figures for Ethiopia are hard to come by, with the ETC website stating as of September 2008 there were 2.6 million mobile subscribers and 911,000 fixed lines. The East African nation currently has a population of approximately 85 million.

Zain’s board of directors accepted the resignation of managing director and deputy chairman Saad Al Barrak, a development that will become effective as of March 1, 2010.

The board called on the ‘reserve member’ for the interim and also discussed the creation of the new position of CEO of Zain Group, the holder of which would succeed Al Barrak. However, the board members decided to defer naming Al Barrak’s successor until its next meeting.

The board expressed its appreciation of all that Al Barrak had achieved for the company over the past seven years, in particular his ambitious 3x3x3 strategy and the role he has played in transforming the group’s performance to match that of the world’s major international telecommunications companies.