Delta Partners was established by a group of ex-Diamond Cluster (now Oliver Wyman) employees in Dubai in the second half of 2006, and has since expanded rapidly in three core areas. Delta Partners specialises in the telecommunications media and technology sectors, servicing the industry through advisory services, private equity and corporate finance facilities. In the middle of this year Delta Partners established an office in Johannesburg, headed up by managing partner Kristoff Puelinckx, who details the rationale behind the expansion.

Johannesburg is not a new city to Delta Partners’ Puelinckx, who says the company has worked with a number of companies in South Africa over the past few years. Hence, it is a natural progression for the company to establish a presence in the country and actively bolt down networking relationships and prospective deals.

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Earlier this year Etisalat announced the commencement of a trial with a local bank to utilise Near Field Communication (NFC) in order to support an array of mobile payment transactions. The initiative is a pioneering one given the few examples of commercial NFC deployments any where in the world. Comm. goes in search of what are the technology’s drivers, positioning and prospects.

A joint initiative between Etisalat and Emirates National Bank of Dubai to pilot Near Field Communication (NFC) is a move that many of the technology’s supporters and detractors will no doubt be paying attention to in order to ascertain whether a solution has finally been developed to fully leverage the mobile device’s natural affinity to banking and payment settlement services.

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A regulatory framework is under construction for mobile and fixed-line number portability to be introduced in Bahrain by the end of the first quarter next year. Michelle Mills considers the point of implementing the regime in a country with a population of less than 750,000

It is surprising that consultant John Horrocks is advising Bahrain’s regulator on how best to establish number portability (NP) in the kingdom, considering he has been outspoken in his view that NP is not feasible in smaller countries with populations of less than 10 million people. He believes that under such circumstances, the costs significantly outweigh the benefits.

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The world is innovating around us at a rapid pace, and nowhere is it more evident than in Dubai. Large, medium and small organisations are innovating to compete with an increasingly competitive environment, with technological advancements ranging from the Palm Island development to the latest customer feedback terminals installed within taxis.

Akshay Lamba is the head of strategic businesses and new initiatives at Al-Futtaim Technologies

Innovation is undoubtedly the key to success today. In the ICT arena, innovation is perhaps best presented in the words of P Evans and TS Wurster – A fundamental shift in the economics of information is under way – a shift that is less about any specific new technology than about the fact that a new behaviour is reaching critical mass. We believe this new behaviour is the demand from business leaders in the region to demystify technology and have it delivered based on sound financial and business reasoning rather than on purely technology-driven considerations.

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With escalating fuel prices, frequent blackouts, and expansion of networks to rural areas off the electricity grid, operators in emerging markets in particular are trialling renewable energy sources to help run their telecoms networks. Given the relatively cheap and reliable energy resources in the GCC, operators in this region are yet to feel the pinch, though threats of an impending energy crisis are set to affect service providers globally. Michelle Mills considers the economically viable ‘green’ energy alternatives that are gaining popularity

There is increasing demand from operators in emerging markets to have their own renewable energy-powered telecoms networks, such as this solar-powered Ericsson site in Indonesia for Telkomsel.

Energy is a costly and rising operating expense in the mobile telecoms sphere, with some network providers in Africa and parts of Asia having to fork out half of their OPEX on energy, and as much as 80 per cent of energy being consumed by base station sites. Such companies are increasingly coming under pressure to develop alternative, affordable energy resources.

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