Last September Intel inaugurated the region’s first Centre of Excellence for Wireless Applications (CEWA) in partnership with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The development forms part of Intel’s plans to expand its Digital Transformation Initiative for the Middle East and fits right into Saudi Arabia’s efforts to create a knowledge-based society
Knowledge is power
February 24th, 2011 — Issue 23 January/February 2011
Time to reward traffic terminator
February 20th, 2011 — Issue 23 January/February 2011
Today, new telecom technologies, globalisation, increased competition, and increased customer mobility have radically changed ways people communicate. Telecom operators around the world are in a race to offer customers a multiplicity of converging services/products at equally attractive and competitive prices. Today, many operators, especially incumbents, are struggling to fight new entrants, to win new customers, to reduce customer churn, and to protect their dramatically eroded profits (declining revenues versus increasing marketing and customer management expenses). Today, operators are on average losing 8-10 per cent of their customers each year. To minimise their losses of revenue and/or explore new revenue opportunities, telecom operators have to re-think their marketing and customer retention strategies and practices.
Mohamed Jamoussi is a senior advisor for Saudi Telecom (STC)
Tips from the top
February 13th, 2011 — Issue 23 January/February 2011
Over the past six years, Zain Group has been a significant contributing party to the corporate strategy guide for network operators in the MEA region. From its aggressive M&A activities at times, to its technology leadership and branding prowess, Zain has become a bellwether for operators across the region. Bashar Arafeh, Zain Group’s chief commercial officer gives his perspective of the main trends currently facing the sector from an operator perspective in the MEA 
Arafeh’s main message to network operators is not to be myopic. He says telcos are in the telecom business not the mobile operator business and as such they should be open to new business opportunities
Capturing the micropayments opportunity
February 9th, 2011 — Issue 23 January/February 2011
Francesco Burelli, principal of Value Partners in London and Zoran Vasiljev, managing director of Value Partners (MEA), offer their insight into the opportunities that exist in the mobile payments sphere
Zoran Vasiljev, managing director of Value Partners (MEA)
Seizing the moment
February 3rd, 2011 — Issue 23 January/February 2011
The man who has been heavily involved in engineering Etisalat’s strategic development over the past 10 years believes the telecom sector is at an inflection point where the entrance of new players into the telecom sphere is resulting in the future of the sector becoming more of an unknown quantity – a ‘shared uncertainty’. Ahmad Julfar, Etisalat’s group chief operating officer, believes more business opportunities than threats exist in the evolving world of telecom, with his focus being on ensuring Etisalat delivers on those prospects
Julfar, an Etisalat stalwart, says the telco needs to remain as dynamic in its outlook as the telecom sector has been of late in order to continue succeeding
