Zain is liable to pay USD 18.6 million. The other two companies are
Korek and Asiacell who have to pay a little over USD 1.2 million and
USD 1.1 million respectively. According to a cabinet statement, the
monetary fines were imposed on the firms for continuing bad service.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) told a Federal
High Court in the capital Abuja that the managing director of
Transcorp, Thomas Iseghohi, and two other top officials embezzled the
money through the award of dubious contracts, payment of legal and
consultancy fees and media adverts. The three pleaded not guilty to 32
charges brought against them by the EFCC. Trial judge Anwuri Chikere
ordered that they be remanded in prison and adjourned the case to 9
June when their bail applications would be heard.
The federal government sold it's 51% stake in NITEL to Transcorp for
USD750 million in November 2006, retaining a 49% interest. Since then
the telco's initial 500,000 fixed lines in service have dropped to
about 45,000, its workforce has declined from 12,000 to just 2,000 and
the company is USD500 million in debt.
In February 2009 Transcorp agreed to divest part of its shareholding
in the telco and in late March the BPE announced it was offering a 51%
stake in the fixed line operator and 100% of its mobile unit. Earlier
this month the bureau extended the deadline for the submission of bids
for the telco from 4 May to 31 May and relaxed the requirements for
the pre-qualification of interested investors.
Ms Dorothy Ooko, the communications manager corporate functions in
East and Southern Africa, told the Kampala Daily Monitor that Nokia
was hunting for software developers in the East African states to give
them a chance to earn the money.
"We are calling on local software developers in Uganda to register
with Forum Nokia and develop applications," Ms Ooko said in interview
last week.
She said any software or application developers in Uganda who
understand the nation's context or information needs can use the
www.forum.nokia platform to showcase their creativity, be voted for
and stand a chance to earn 70 per cent of revenue from the use of the
applications by Nokia phone customers across the world.
She said, all that a participant needs to do is register both his or
her details and application with Nokia for free.
"If your application wins, we put that application on our devices and
everyone can access it on our Ovi store at a certain fee," Ms Ooko
said.
Ovi Store is an evolving media service that consolidates Nokia's
existing content services into a one-stop-shop for free and paid
content.
According to the communication specialist, Nokia - one of the world's
largest maker of mobile phones - has over one billion Nokia phones in
the market that could sign-up for one of these applications. She added
that the software developers will be in position to track the number
of people using their applications.
"We are helping local developers make money," Ms Ooko said when Daily
Monitor asked her about the possibility of people losing their
applications. A visit to Nokia's website www.nokia.com revealed that
participants also stand a chance to win a grand prize of Shs68 million
of the Shs560 million at stake for participants.
Nokia, which has its headquarters in Finland, is currently holding
meetings and educating software developers in Kenya and Tanzania about
the benefits of participating in its online forum competition that is
open until 30 June this year.
The ads are delivered based on a user's (mobile phone) location. The
ads are delivered within a 10km radius of the user, making it possible
to promote a special offer available at a specific store. Through the
new Grid website, location-specific banner ads are delivered to a
user's dashboard once logged in.
A web-based location targeted ad will tell a user how far they are
from the store's physical location, for example "this is a
location-based ad approximately 283m from you". Once a user clicks on
the ads they are taken through to the location of that store on a Grid
map. The ads are charged on a cost-per-click model, making it
affordable and possible for companies and brands to tailor their
advertising needs specific to different stores or promotions.
"Today and in the future, customers are demanding a significant amount
of data services to be made available via their mobile phones.
Previously, we had a number of complex disparate networks delivering
services to our customers, which were extremely expensive to manage,"
commented Mr. Hassan Kabbani, president and CEO for Mobinil. "We
estimate that if we had not deployed a Cisco platform we would have
had to increase our infrastructure 10-fold in the core network just to
carry all the different services to meet customer needs."
Mobinil will be delivering a suite of data, voice and video services
over a IP-NGN, using Cisco XR 12410 Routers and the Cisco CRS-1
Carrier Routing System.
Posted to the site on 29th May 2009
This brings to an end the largely exclusive ability of only those people who can afford contract packages, to use the wide array of applications on Blackberry devices.
The development will be of particular interest to owners or employees of micro and small enterprises, who are unable to afford contract packages, but still need enhanced mobile services such as e-mail, web browsing and other business applications.
The new Prepaid Blackberry solution includes the ability for users to use email accounts, browse the internet, view, send and post pictures directly on the web, download applications, schedule appointments, and use other office tools while not being at their offices.
Says Emeka Oparah, Zain Nigeria's spokesman and Head of Corporate Social Responsibility and Public Relations: "We are further strengthened in the telecom business with the introduction of the service for all categories of our customers in our bid to remove communication barrier for all because "no matter the platform you belong, every subscriber irrespective of status is a contributor to our business growth."
The Blackberry services will also be available to customers who travel to other countries and regions, as it will be connected to the borderless Zain One Network, providing connectivity to customers across Zain's Middle East and Africa territories.
A range of BlackBerry smart phones including BlackBerry Pearl 8100 Smartphone, BlackBerry 8820 Smartphone, BlackBerry Curve 8320 Smartphone, BlackBerry Bold 9000 Smartphone, BlackBerry Curve 8900 (Javelin) and BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220 are already available in Zain shops throughout the country.
Kirène, a mineral water brand in Senegal says that it has launched an MVNO in the country, running on the Orange Senegal network. The mobile service will be branded as "Kirène Mobile avec Orange", with the Mobile Virtual Network Enabler (MVNE) services being supplied by Transatel.
The bringing together of these two groups has been carried out by Philippe Vigneau, Transatel's Director of Business Development. "Being a forerunner for both companies, this project was really important to us. First of all because it was the first partnership concluded in Africa on a brand agreement (with Orange). On the other hand it is the first time that a food-industry brand, turns to a worldwide operator to develop a mobile telephony offer."
Orange is the largest mobile network in Senegal by subscriber numbers. According to the Mobile World, the operator ended last year with just over 3.5 million customers and a market share of 65.6%. The country itself has a population penetration level of 42.5%.
South African mobile group MTN has finally acquired a 60 per cent stake in Kenyan corporate communications solutions firm UUNET, whose holding firm is also South Africa-based, the weekly EastAfrican newspaper reports.
Senior officials at the Uganda subsidiary of the telecom giant confirmed the transaction, but referred us to the group's head office in Johannesburg, South Africa, for details. MTN Uganda is not officially allowed to comment on the acquisition as it was conducted at headquarters level.
The Johannesburg-based group executive for corporate affairs, Nozipho January-Bardill, also declined to comment on the deal, but said the telecom giant is actively seeking expansion opportunities.
"MTN does not respond to market speculation. The group is committed to its expansion strategy of actively seeking value-creating opportunities in emerging markets," she said in an email.
According to Premium Business Information Source Alacra Store, the group's last acquisition was on March 12, this year — New Clicks Holdings, a Cape Town-based pharmaceutical distributor.
MTN has been trying to get into the Kenya market for some years now. UUNET Kenya spokesman Kenneth Kareithi was more upfront, saying it was a done deal, although both parties were yet to issue a press statement.
"We've not told the media anything on this merger, but we will do so soon," he said on phone.
MTN will now have a chance to go head to head with Safaricom, which has ruled the roost in company performance for three years running.
At last year's CEO's Most Respected Company Survey gala held at Kampala's Serena Hotel, MTN Chief Executive Noel Meier said his company would take on Safaricom as the region's most respected company.
But this is not what industry analysts thought would happen since UUNET — which started out in Kenya in 2001 — is both a mobile operator and a broadband internet service provider, unlike other telecom operators that MTN has courted in the past.
The South Africans missed the first chance to enter Kenya's telecom domain in 2004, when the then Celtel International [renamed Zain in 2008] beat them to KenCell, which was being sold by French telecom company Vivendi.
But MTN's interest in the market did not ebb, buoyed, perhaps, by the realisation that Kenya is the most robust telecom market in the region, going by what Safaricom has achieved — more than 10 million subscribers, the biggest IPO in East Africa and a vibrant mobile money transfer service that rakes in millions.
However, Kenya offers other opportunities, particularly in the emerging data market segment and in business process outsourcing.
Because of this, MTN bid to buy a 51 per cent stake in 2007 in the state-owned Telkom, but lost to French Telecom, which last year rolled out the Orange service brand.
Just last month, there was talk of a possible takeover of Econet by MTN. Econet is Kenya's fourth mobile operator, trading under the Yu brand.
MTN is the continent's largest telecom company. It's drive for expansion comes as operators await the landing of undersea cables on the eastern coast to serve eastern and central Africa.
Once connectivity and call costs become less costly — analysts say by as much as 20-30 per cent — operators will look at growth in the lucrative industry.
MTN will consolidate its already intimidating profile on the continent — its profit went up 44 per cent last year to $1.6 billion while its earnings before interest, tax depreciation and armotisation was $5.22 billion in 2008.
This was a decline of 1.4 per cent from the previous year, but the earnings are expected to jump to $7.67 billion by 2013.
Following a feasibility study, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) has concluded that mobile number portability (MNP) is not necessary until the wireless subscriber tally is higher. 'At this stage, number portability is not something we see as a remedy in this market,' Patrick Masambu, executive director of the UCC, said.
'We carried out a study into this and we have the conclusion that there is a certain subscriber sum we need before we introduce number portability because of the costs involved.' Masambu said that MNP will only make sense when there are ten million mobile subscribers in the country.
At the time the UCC conducted the study Uganda had three million users, a figure which had jumped to 8.7 million by the end of 2008.
Zimbabwe's Powertel Communications, a unit of Zesa Holdings, is set to roll out a CDMA-based wireless in the local loop (WiLL) network in the country's second largest city Bulawayo before the end of the year, reports local news source Sunday Mail Business.
CDMA services are currently only available to customers of incumbent PSTN operator TelOne in the capital Harare and surrounding areas. The Sunday Mail learned that Powertel has already sourced two base stations that will form the basis for the initial network in Bulawayo.
The firm has a strategic partnership with Chinese telecoms equipment provider ZTE Corp, and in 2005 the pair signed a USD35 million deal to support Powertel's national fibre network rollout programme. CDMA facilities in Bulawayo will partly be aimed at offering reliable services to businesses, after suffering problems caused by vandalism and theft of TelOne's equipment.
Naguib Sawiris, CEO of Orascom Telecom, says the Egyptian company's initial bid for a 32% stake in Moroccan cellco Medi Telecom (Meditel) has been trumped by two other interested parties, reports Reuters. He added that his firm was not willing to raise its bid for the stake being offered for sale by Portugal Telecom (PT), which has been valued at between EUR300 million-EUR400 million (USD414 million-USD552 million).
UAE-based Etisalat last week said it would place a bid for a slice of Morocco's second largest GSM network operator, which is also part-owned by Telefonica. The Spanish telco reportedly did not take up an option of first refusal on PT's stake, and is rumoured to be considering offloading its own 32% holding if a suitable strategic bidder is selected by PT. At least one other major Middle Eastern telco is thought to be interested.
East African submarine fibre-optic cable system SEACOM has announced that it is entering the final stages of construction. According to the SEACOM website, the 15,000km, 1.28Tbps cable system is due to launch operations in early July this year.
SEACOM CEO Brian Herlihy said, 'SEACOM is in its final stretch! With the rapid progress of construction, we will soon be providing cheaper and faster bandwidth to our customers. The site acceptance testing was recently completed in Mombasa, and the terminal installation has also been completed in South Africa.'
MyBroadband.co.za has reported that construction of the physical cable system is completed and testing is due to commence in early June. Angus Hay, chief technology officer of Neotel - SEACOM's South African 'anchor tenant', confirmed that the company is preparing end-to-end testing on the cable system. Hay said that this testing will involve the full system which runs from the Neotel point-of-presence in Midrand, South Africa along the East African coast to India and Europe.
Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust is reporting that the CEO of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Ernest Ndukwe, is being questioned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for allegedly contravening due process in the award of spectrum in the 2.3GHz frequency band last week.
The licensing of the WiMAX spectrum, which was slated to fetch the federal government over NGN5 billion, has been embroiled in controversy with petitions to the Presidency and the commission on the conduct of the exercise. The NCC has released a statement in response to the events, which states: 'Executive vice chairman of the NCC, Ernest Ndukwe, yesterday was invited to the office of the EFCC in Abuja, to give his response to a petition filed by the minister of information and communications, Professor Dora Akunyili, who alleged that the Commission did not heed to her directive to stop the ongoing process for the award of spectrum slot in the 2.3GHz band.'
A senior official in the EFCC told Daily Trust that Mobitel Nigeria, one of the companies to be awarded a WiMAX licence, raised NGN1.368 billion by the deadline to pay the fee, but in October last year was said to be indebted to the commission to the tune of NGN246 million, which it was unable to pay. This forced the NCC to waive a total of NGN243 million debt for the company, leaving a balance of NGN3 million for the firm to pay. Mobitel, alongside Spectranet and fixed-wireless operator Multilinks, emerged as winners out of 41 applicants for the four slots in the 2.3 GHz after each of them paid NGN1.368 billion for the frequency used to support to WiMAX technology. Galaxy Wireless was also cleared as a successful applicant, but failed to pay the fee by the deadline. Other unsuccessful applicants faulted the commission on how the whole process was conducted, especially the one week timeframe given to pay the necessary fees.
Ndukwe is also being investigated over allegations of spending money beyond the commission's budget for 2008 and misleading the government in the execution of contracts for the construction of community information centres across the country. A spokesperson for the NCC told the paper that Ndukwe 'wishes to reiterate that the process is transparent in line with the antecedents of the Commission's previous licensing processes. He said it would be unthinkable for anybody to associate him, or any member of the board and management of the Commission, with any of the four companies that participated in the process.'
The Capital Markets Authority said it was studying the offer by Orange Participations, but gave no further details. A Mobinil spokesman declined immediate comment.
Mobinil, one of three mobile operators in the most populous Arab country, has been at the centre of a dispute between regional operator Orascom Telecom and France Telecom.
Egypt's market regulator had said that France Telecom should tender to buy all shares in Mobinil as part of a court ruling that it purchase Orascom's stake in a holding company that owns 51 percent of Mobinil.
Mobinil posted a 6 percent fall in net income last month for the first quarter of 2009 to 424 million Egyptian pounds ($75 million), missing most analysts' forecasts as it faced higher interest costs.
The Egyptian stock exchange said it had suspended trade on Mobinil shares until the markets authority finishes studying the offer. Shares had jumped more than 6 percent on Monday on speculation of a pending offer to end at 204.97 pounds.
- Reuters
This was said to ANGOP on Monday by the director of the National Communications Institute (INACOM), Domingos Pedro António.
According to the official, who was speaking in the light of the World Telecommunication Day, marked on Sunday, five million of these users are clients of the mobile phone company Unitel and 2.5 million users belong to the other firm, Movicel.
Regarding the fixed telephone service, over 100,000 customers are customers of the of state-owned company Angola Telecom, overcoming the other operators, namely Mundo Startel, MSTelecom, Nexus and Wezacom, the official said.
Except for Angola Telecom, Domingos Pedro António clarified that the other fixed telephone companies have only recently started operating in the national market.
The official considered as positive the telephone services provided in Angola.
The 10th Public Policy Meeting of AfriNIC, the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Africa, is currently taking place in Cairo, Egypt. The meeting aims to provide stakeholders with an opportunity to have some input into the future of Internet regulation on the African continent.
AfriNIC is a non-government, not-for-profit, membership based organization based in Mauritius. Its mandate is to administer and serve African Internet Community, with its core function being the allocation and registration of Internet name and number resources.
Membership in the organisation is open to individuals and companies operating online on the African continent.
Participants at the 10th meetings are drawn from among the continent's network operators, AfriNIC members, policy makers, regulators, and other regional Internet registries. The event is being hosted by the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) of Egypt, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt, and sponsored by NTRA, MCIT, Internet Society (ISOC), Cisco Systems Inc. (CISCO) and Google.
Zain is the 4th largest mobile network in the world in terms of geographic footprint, with a commercial presence in 23 countries across the Middle East and Africa. The company has more than 64 million active customers.
Says Ahmad Othman, Head of Zain Group Customer Business Team at Nokia Siemens Networks: "The trial is a definite milestone for us. Working in a live environment not only meant customization of existing network elements, but ensuring there was no outage during testing,"
"We delivered on this and more, proving the simplicity and superiority of our solution. We are now looking forward to working with Zain to translate the benefits of this test to real commercial use - that is - improving mobile broadband end user experience."
Nokia Siemens Networks' I-HSPA introduces a flat network architecture that enables cost-efficient scaling of broadband networks with rapidly growing data traffic volumes. As part of HSPA+, the standardized I-HSPA works with all WCDMA/HSPA/HSPA+ devices, and improves end user experience by reducing latency.
The country's largest organized labour movement, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) brought an urgent application in the Pretoria High Court attempting to prevent the listing.
Presiding judge John Murphy dismissed the application with cost, effectively giving the transaction the green light.
The completed listing process will see the country's largest fixes line operator, Telkom, sell 15% of its 50% stake in Vodacom to UK based mobile network giant Vodafone for ZAR22,5 billion.
Telkom will further un-bundle its remaining 35% shareholding to its own shareholders in the form of publicly traded Vodacom stock. Vodafone will be the majority shareholder in the newly listed entity, with 65% of the total shareholding.
The country's communication regulator, the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa (ICASA), also had a sudden change of heart just before the weekend, saying that it had concerns over the legality of Vodacom's operating license if a foreign entity became the majority shareholder of the network provider. The move both surprised and concerned many market commentators, as ICASA had previously approved of the deal, and seemed to do an about-turn because of political pressure.
Following the ruling, COSATU spokesperson Patrick Craven said that the trade union organization was not satisfied with the outcome of the case, and that his organization still believed the deal would be detrimental to South Africa, with such unwanted effects as job losses for local communication workers. He further said that COSATU is considering alternative measures, including a possible nationwide boycott of Vodacom by its members.
Meanwhile, speculation exists that COSATU's real reason for attempts to prevent the listing, is some form of retaliation against allies of the country's former president, Thabo Mbeki, as they allegedly stand to make a lot of money from the transaction.
The appointment of the final member of an international tribunal to review the sale of V-Mobile Nigeria to Middle East headquartered mobile phone operator Zain, has this week been confirmed by the Chief Justice of the Nigerian Federal High Court.
This comes despite objections by founding shareholder Econet Wireless. Econet claimed its pre-emption rights were breached when the sale was concluded.
In a statement, Econet said that it had been notified of the appointment of the panel and that the tribunal was intending to commence hearings as early as the end of this month.
Econet Wireless was the operator in a consortium of investors that launched Nigeria's first GSM mobile network operation in 2001. The network has grown into country's second largest operator, with about 20 million customers.
Econet claimed that its pre-emption rights in respect of shares had been breached when Econet's predominantly Nigerian partners decided to sell their shares in V-Mobile to Zain in 2006. Consequently, Econet tried to prevent the sale of the shares to Zain through the UK courts, but the judge ruled that the UK was not the appropriate place for such legal proceedings as the matter was more closely connected with Nigeria. Since then, Econet has commenced ongoing legal proceedings in the Nigerian courts.
The tribunal will undertake the arbitration using the rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, known as UNCITRAL. Arbitration proceedings normally take approximately 18 months to conclude.
In a yet further arbitration concerning the disputed sale, a London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) tribunal has ruled that Zain was under an obligation, if it involved itself in the Econet transaction, to act in good faith so as to ensure the minimum conflict with Econet possible. This decision was recently introduced into the Nigerian proceedings and will be a key document in Econet's claim in the Nigerian courts going forward.
Meanwhile, Econet has also been pursuing its battle through the Dutch courts, where Zain's African operations had its headquarters at the time of the sale.
