MyAdhan Blog

Link: Turkey: Oger Telecom says plans South Africa investment

Oger Telecom will invest part of its $2.6 billion proceeds from the sale of a stake to Saudi Telecom in South African fixed-line operator Telkom, Oger Chief Executive Paul Doany told reporters. Saudi Telecom Co, the largest Arab telecom firm by market value, said on Sunday it had agreed to buy 35 percent of Oger in a move giving it access to markets from Turkey to South Africa. “As to Telkom South Africa, Oger Telecom submitted an offer which we believe to be in the interest of both Telkom and our Cell C. We hope to see progress with this soon,” said Doany, also chairman of fixed-line company Turk Telekom, an Oger unit. Doany, speaking at a meeting with reporters on Monday evening, did not specify the size of the offer. Oger already has a majority stake in unlisted Cell C, South Africa’s third-biggest mobile operator. Oger Telecom, controlled by the family of late Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, also operates in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan, providing fixed-line, mobile and internet services. Saudi Oger has been looking to sell shares in its telecom business for more than a year. Oger Telecom announced a $1.25 billion initial public offering in 2006 but cancelled it on concerns about tumbling Gulf Arab markets.

Link: Kuwait’s Zain denies advanced talks over Syriatel

Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications Co denied it was in any “advanced” talks over acquisition plans after a newspaper reported on Tuesday it was looking at taking over Syriatel Mobile Telecom. Al-Qabas said Zain, the third-largest Arab telecom firm by market value, was in “advanced talks” to buy 51 percent of Syriatel, citing unidentified sources. “Zain always pursues acquisitions of companies in several places and has not reached advanced talks on any of them,” Zain said in a statement on the Kuwait bourse Web site. Zain, which operates in about 20 countries, is looking to expand its international operations to counter rising competition at home, where Saudi Telecom Co 7010.SE is to set up the country’s third mobile phone company. “Al-Qabas has learned that advanced talks are going on for Zain to acquire a 51 percent stake in Syriatel,” the newspaper reported. It gave no other details. Syriatel has 2.3 million customers and a 55 percent market share in Syria, according to its Web site. Syrian businessman Rami Makhlouf controls Syriatel. Turkey’s largest mobile phone operator Turkcell TCELL.IS said last month it had decided to bid for Syriatel and was looking to buy at least 51 percent of the company. Zain shares, which gained almost 7 percent this month, were down 1.96 percent at 0631 GMT.

Link: Saudi Arabia: Mobile Users Endangering Flights

The airline flight crew requests passengers to switch off their cell phones, but what happens when passengers won’t? An Alitalia flight from Milan was aborted on Saturday and three passengers arrested after their continued cell phone use interfered with the airline’s navigation equipment. Both abroad and in the Kingdom, scofflaws are endangering planeloads of passengers simply for a text message or a call. In Saudi Arabia, people refusing to switch off their cell phones even after the imploring of pilots and stewardesses is becoming a common occurrence on domestic flights. “We regularly see flight stewardesses shouting at passengers who refuse to switch off their cell phones,” Mazin Salem, a young Saudi executive, told Arab News in Jeddah. “Sometimes obstinate passengers do it out of ignorance and sometimes they do it out of utter contempt for the safety rules and regulations. They take offense at flight crew ordering them to switch off their cells.” Ghassan Majdali, a local bank executive, said that on one of his business trips to Riyadh, a man in his late 40s refused to turn his mobile off throughout the flight despite numerous pleas by other passengers and the flight crew. “The man refused to believe that it was dangerous to keep the cell phone on during the course of the flight. ‘Do you actually believe all that?’ was the way he countered fellow passengers,” Majdali said. “He continued talking endlessly even as the plane took off. When we got off the plane, he gave a dirty look to all those passengers who were requesting him to switch off. He was mocking everybody.” “Yes, it is a pretty common scene,” laments Muayad Aziz, a Saudi in his 30s. “Now people think twice before telling co-passengers to turn off their cell phones. What if they hit back, saying: ‘What’s your problem?” Some women have also been said to be ignoring the rules. “I kept telling my co-passenger to switch off,” Saudi teacher Abeer Fawaz said of a woman sitting next to her on a recent Jeddah-Dammam flight. “She would refuse, saying it was none of my business to teach her what to do and what not to. Throughout the flight she was merrily texting away. I tried to reason with her saying that by doing so she is jeopardizing the lives of all other people on board. She would have none of it. And instead said: ‘Please don’t pay heed to these inflight announcements. Just relax.’ The thing is she just didn’t realize that what she was doing was a crime.”

Link: Saudi to Buy Oger Telecom Stake for $2.56 Billion

Another Link: Saudi Telecom to buy Oger stake for $2.6 bln

Saudi Telecom Co., the Arab world’s largest phone company, agreed to buy 35 percent of Oger Telecom for 9.6 billion riyals ($2.56 billion) to gain access to markets including Turkey and South Africa amid growing competition at home. Saudi Telecom will complete the acquisition by the end of the first quarter, the Riyadh-based company said in a filing to the Saudi stock exchange. Oger Telecom, controlled by Lebanon’s Hariri family, provides fixed, mobile and Internet services in Turkey, South Africa and Lebanon. “This acquisition offsets home competition and gives the company a wider footprint”,Diala Hoteit, telecom analyst at National Bank of Kuwait, said in a telephone interview. The purchase is at least the third that Saudi Telecom has made in the past year as it prepares for a third mobile-phone provider to begin service in Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s largest economy. In 2007, it won a mobile-phone license in Kuwait for $908 million, and paid $3 billion for a 25 percent stake in Malaysia’s Maxis Communications Bhd. The Maxis stake gives Saudi Telecom access to 1.4 billion people in Asia and enables it to provide roaming services to at least 1.5 million Indians working in Saudi Arabia.

Link: SIM Nation: 76.6 Million Mobile Subscribers in Pakistan? Could this be right? Is this good?

Babar Bhatti reports on his blog State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan that in 2007 the total number of mobile subscribers in Pakistan reached 76.6 million. He is reporting from an interesting statistical compilation of achievements compiled by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA); (more number from this report are included below). I ask the questions I do in the headline not out of cynicism but out of very honest inquisitiveness. I deal a lot with development related statistics in my professional work and for many reasons the number seems rather surprising to me. It probably is that the meaning of subscriber here is different from what I would have expected or that I am unfamiliar with the specifics of how this number is calculated and what it signifies. If so, I am eager to learn. I also wonder to what extent massive growth in mobile phone subscribers is necessarily good for a developing country like Pakistan? Depending on who you want to believe the population of Pakistan is somewhere around 165-140 million. Probably closer to the latter number; some estimates would suggest even higher. If subscriber means the number of unique individuals who are subscribing to a mobile service (as it would in many other development contexts) it would mean that nearly half of all Pakistanis - man, woman, child, old, young, infant, newborn - are mobile phone subscribers. Although anyone in Pakistan knows that the penetration of cellphone to all classes - including middle and lower-middle income groups - is very high, the absolute poor (and there are still a very large number) are not likely to be subscribers. It is also likely that the penetration is much less in rural areas than in urban, that it is much much less amongst the very old and should be zero or nearly zero amongst the very young. I have seen some kids (12-15 years) with cell phone of their own, but these would be mostly in the higher economic strata and it could not be a very high number. Similarly, while the phenomenon of multiple phones per family is now dominant in many middle and most higher income groups, one assumes that it is less prevalent in the lower income groups. Any set of reasonable assumptions about these are related variables would suggest that the wording from the PTC is potentially misleading. It is more likely that the number is really of the cell phone numbers issued and technically in use. The fact, however, is that many many of these issued numbers would not really be in use. However, given the SIM culture and the rather common practice of holding multiple SIM cards and numbers (I have two myself, and I don’t even live in Pakistan!) it would not be surprising that the real subscribers are much less - although a still impressive number…

Link: Turkey: Dhanus buys Turkish telecom

The Chennai-headquartered Dhanus Technologies has acquired Turkey’s first alternative telecom operator - Borusan Telekom. While the acquisition cost of Borusan Telekom was not immediately known, Dhanus has indicated its plans to invest about $200 million in Europe, West Asia and Canada for M&A purposes. The company’s Vice Chairman,. S. Muthukrishnan, said Dhanus was moving towards becoming a global provider of efficient telecommunication services by combining different technologies on the same platform. On the recent acquisition, he said: “With 34 POP stations (of which 32 were within Turkey and 2 abroad) Borusan offers one of the strongest alternative networks. It will now contribute to the consolidation of the market and help enhance our scale of operations.”

Link: Iran: Research projects SMS revenue allocation requires legislation – ICT deputy

Ministry of Information & Communication Technology Educational, Research and International Affairs deputy stressed that allocation of mobile phone SMS revenue to universities’ research projects across the country requires legislation. Kamaal Mohamedpour, in conversation with MOBNA referred to the President’s proposal that such revenue be allocated to research projects said such funds should go through legal procedures before reaching such bodies. “Parliament acts stipulate that Telecom revenue is credited to Government Treasury before a portion of it is allocated to the ICT Ministry.” he added. He indicated that government agencies are required to allocate 1% of their funds to research projects. He added that Telecom Research Center obtains its research fund through legal channels, which is not necessarily SMS revenue. Earlier, President Ahmadinejad had stressed that SMS revenue be allocated to universities’ research projects and so the ICT Ministry.

Link: Zain in Saudi Arabia and Nokia Siemens Networks sign approximately US$1 billion turnkey 2G and 3G network contract

New greenfield contract includes multi-year managed services, network operations and maintenance services. Zain in Saudi Arabia and Nokia Siemens Networks today signed a contract to roll out a state-of–the-art greenfield mobile network in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Nokia Siemens Networks will supply a full turnkey 2G and 3G mobile network, including core and radio networks, operations and business support systems, applications and a full suite of services, including managed services. Under the terms of the contract, Nokia Siemens Networks will provide to Zain in Saudi Arabia the latest 2G and 3G mobile network technologies, including HSDPA and HSUPA, based on the latest base station design and distributed architecture for both radio access and core networks according to the 3GPP release 4 standard. The compact Flexi base station design enables the customer to save significantly on capital and operational expenditure and allows for a fast rollout. With the distributed architecture of its mobile softswitch and multimedia gateway, Nokia Siemens Networks is able to offer Zain in Saudi Arabia a cost optimized core network solution with a fast rollout to enable new advanced services for subscribers.

Link: Pakistan telecommunication company new billing service

The spokesmen of Pakistan telecommunication company (PTCL) business north zone said that a billing helpline service NO.1080 has already been working for customers of the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. In a Press Released he said that this service is available for the valued customers to access the helpline to covey only the details of payment of their phone bills like date, amount and the bank branch, or post office in which the bill was paid in. The spokesmen elaborated that now there will be no need of fixing the copy or delivering personally the paid bill, only one conveying the few lines details at phone no. 1080, the phone will be restored whereas, the details of payment of bill will be verified by PTCL staff letter on, he added that the phones closed under default can also be reactivated if the outstanding dues are paid. The helpline service number 1080 is operative from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM. He said that the phone bills for the billing month of December 2007 have already been dispatched through Pakistan post to their mailing address. The customers are urged to pay their bills with in due date. They can get information about their phone bills amount as well as arrears by dialing U.A.N 111-462-462. PTCL is facilitating customers to pay their phone bills through phone bill card available at customer service canters, shops in the cities. The nominated Muslim Commercial Bank (MCB) and Askari Commercial Bank (ACB) branches located in Islamabad-Rawalpindi have been providing facility of payment of bill through ATM cards in addition to other commercial banks branches for the same purpose. PTCL always is aimed at providing better telecom service to its valued customers.

Link: Kuwait: Zain Denies Reports of Vodafone Investment

Rumours in Kuwait’s financial markets over the past few days have suggested that Vodafone, along with another company are preparing to take a stake in Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications, or Zain as it is now known. A report in the Arabic Al-Seyassah newspaper had suggested the sale could cost as much as US$29 billion. Kuwait’s Kharafi Group is Zain’s second-largest shareholder behind the government itself -holding 8.7% of the company. The company issued a statement during the morning stating that it is not aware of any negotiations regarding one of its major shareholders selling a strategic stake to Vodafone. “The Kuwaiti bourse is always experiencing such rumors. Speculators are usually behind them,” said a Zain spokesman. Zain (formerly MTC) currently has operations in seven Middle Eastern and 15 sub-Saharan African countries.