Strategic insights and content viewpoints from Huawei, TA Telecom, Virgin Mobile, Smile and 2Go on Day 1 of VAS Africa

For the first time this year VAS Africa was co-located with MVNOs Africa, and more than 250 delegates from the two events joined the opening keynote session on June 24^th at the Maslow Sandton in Johannesburg.  

With strategic insight from Huawei and TA Telecom, together with operator and content viewpoints from Virgin Mobile, Smile and 2Go, the keynote session set the scene for a day discussing innovation in both technology and marketing strategies.

Panellists and speakers assessed the role of operators in the expanding digital ecosystem – dumb pipe/data channel or innovator, with emphasis placed this year on the importance of the role of pipe/channel.  The conference went on to discuss the opportunities available from partnerships with OTT players and content providers.  Operators should consider aligning their strategies with the likes of skype, viber and whatsapp – to maximise what these players are doing within the operators’ own strategies.  Alignment and partnership were deemed to be the way forward, not competition.

Focus on the customer is key.  Is the customer educated on the cost of data consumption?  Is the app/service easy to use?  Is the content relevant and local to the customer?  What services will create stickiness?  Where is the consumer and how do they prefer to receive the content/services?  Also important to remember is that while 154 million African customers use a smartphone, still 931 million use the feature hone.

The first day concluded with the Mobile Marketing and Advertising session, bringing case studies of new ways to target the consumer via mobile.  At the heart of the day was the reminder that the operator knows the customer best and thus retains a pivotal role in the expanding digital ecosystem.

Together with the key content take-aways, delegates enjoyed extensive networking opportunities across the VAS and MVNOs events - speed networking, one-to-one introductions and an informal drinks reception at the close of the day.  Join us for day two and a focus on Mobile Money, Mobile Music, Social Networking, and Key VAS for the African market.

 Join us for day two of VAS Africa to hear from MTN, Cell C, Safaricom, Nokia and many more.

Ghana: Vodafone commits to $120m network upgrade

It has been impossible of late not to set telecoms news and commentary in the context of these troubled times for the global economy. I find myself looking for signs of our sector's resilience. In that spirit, I am keen to flag up examples of telcos committing to significant items of CAPEX. One such, reported last week in the Global Mobile Daily is Vodafone's selection of network vendor Huawei to upgrade the 2G network of the national incumbent carrier, Ghana Telecom, in which the giant cellco acquired a 70% stake back in July 2008.

At the same time as entering Ghana's mobile market, Vodafone also took over Ghana Telecom's fixed-line and broadband operation, which has around 99% of the total number of lines and around 90% share of the retail ADSL market. Ghana Telecom's mobile arm, One Touch, has been something of an underperformer. The MNO claimed 15.49% of mobile subscriptions by December 2008, according to Informa Telecoms & Media's World Cellular Information Service. This represents a slow, but steady decline in market share, which had stood at 18.29% at the end of 2006. Over this period, market-leading Scancom, a unit of the South Africa's MTN has held onto a solid lead over its four rivals. According to an article in Ghana's Chronicle newspaper last week, Vodafone will be aiming to compete more effectively in this context through a "commitment to deliver on its promise of providing a world class service to Ghanaians and to transform Ghana Telecom to an enviable position in the telecom industry."

Ghana will be among the countries to be represented at our West & Central Africa Com event, which this year will take place in Abuja, Nigeria in mid-June. The event will be a good opportunity to network and do business with all those involved in developing the region's telecoms sector.

Russian cellco gets to work in Cambodia

Earlier this week, Global Mobile Daily picked up on developments in Cambodia, where Russian cellco Vimpelcom has made progress with setting up its newest foreign operation. Chinese vendor Huawei has picked up the contract to roll out a nationwide GSM900/1800 network for Sotelco, 90% of whose parent company, Atlas Trade was purchased by Vimpelcom in July this year. This stake was bought from Vimpelcom's largest shareholder, Altimo.

Having just completed the speaker line-up and agenda for our Eurasia Com event (March 31 & 1 April 2009, Istanbul), we continue to watch Moscow-based telcos and investors such as Vimpelcom and Altimo, with a view to assembling another compelling set of presenters for the Moscow event whose discussions are more sharply focused on developments in the Russian Federation itself, as well as neighbouring states Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova.

Nawras CEO joins GSM>3G Middle East speaker panel

I was delighted to hear from Omani MNO Nawras this morning, confirming the participation of CEO Ross Cormack on the panel of speakers at our GSM>3G Middle East TOWARDS A BROADBAND WORLD event in Dubai this December. Ross has been a loyal and enthusiastic supporter of the conference and it will be a pleasure to welcome him and his colleagues once again.

Since Ross participated at the 2007 version of the event, Nawras have gone first-to-market with 3.5G services in Oman. Nawras competes in the cellular space with the mobile business unit of incumbent carrier Omantel. Oman Mobile has yet to deploy a 3G network, but in February this year it was reported that Huawei had undercut Ericsson and Nokia Siemens networks to win the Oman Mobile contract for the building out UMTS coverage. I notice that this report describes Oman Mobile as "one of the few cellcos in the Middle East yet to build a 3G network'. I beg to differ. Referring to the invaluable World Cellular Information Service from Informa Telecoms & Media, I can see that 3G networks are as yet absent in all of Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. We expect all of these countries to be well represented at our December conference, as well as good-sized contingents from South Asian, North African and West African markets where mobile carriers are associated with Middle Eastern shareholders/owners. So I have proposed that Ross Cormack speak on the theme of gaining competitive advantage through the first-to-market deployment of a 3G network. That ought to be useful for delegates from those countries.

I am also mindful of the fact that the Omani market has recently opened up to MVNOs and mobile resellers, so a possible alternative presentation topic for Ross would be to look at how far market liberalisation and the emergence of this kind of new entrant compels established players to sharpen their focus on understanding and maximising customer value.

Two of the MVNOs concerned, FRiENDi mobile and Majan Telecom are already confirmed participants at our conference. The former will be represented by Fayez Husseini (SVP, Business Development), the latter by the company CEO Niklas Nielsen. So we are well on the way to having the Omani telecoms sector very well represented at the conference.

Vendors and operators show one-size does not fit all across the Middle East

This morning I had the pleasure of meeting a marketing contact with responsibility for the Middle East, Pakistan and Africa, representing one of the major network infrastructure vendors. The purpose of the meeting was to work out the timing and topic for the presentation to be made by the company's speaker at our December "Towards a Broadband World" event in Dubai.

It is always gratifying when a sponsor's thoughts about selecting a value-adding topic are not too far from my own. In this case, we wanted to urge our customer to talk in quite broad terms about the range of competing and complementary broadband wireless access technologies being evaluated by mobile, fixed and integrated operators in the region. I felt this was important for a number of reasons. Firstly, we are working hard to broaden the focus of the conference well beyond issues concerning either pure-play mobility businesses or the mobile-specific business units of carriers with both cellular and wireline assets. I am confident we will be successful, so I was keen for our customer to take advantage of speaking in a plenary sessions, when the themes addressed need to be broader than the issues tackled in technology-specific breakouts. Secondly, I felt that a more holistic look at all forms of broadband access made sense in the light of what I was told by a colleague who represented me a few weeks ago in face-to-face meetings with a number of operators in the Middle East.

Aaron Boasman, who works in our Networks & Infrastructure team, came back from a quick tour of the region armed with interesting insights. He was told by the GM of Corporate Affairs at one country's incumbent operator told Aaron that the company was more bullish about the prospects for fixed broadband access than the mobile version on the grounds of the robustness of the service. Certainly at the time of that meeting, the company had not deployed WiMAX, unlike its principal competitor in the mobile space. On another leg of the journey, Aaron was told by one operator that WiMAX deployment has been signidficantly delayed mainly as a result of the country's unsatisfactory regulatory regime. In that particular meeting, HSPA was given a very favourable review due to the country's poor quality copper network and very under-developed FTTx.

These snippets confirmed for me that when telecoms industry watchers attempt to speak in broad terms about trends in a given world region, they need to be mindful that these regions are not always neatly homogenous. A look at Zain, whose footprint extends across and beyond the Middle East, support this view.

Matthew Reed, writing for our fortnightly Middle East & Africa Wireless Analyst research service this month flagged up Zain's imminent market entry in Saudi Arabia. Matthew writes that this new market's huge potential for high-speed Internet-access services is sparking interest in the group's wider wireless broadband strategy. The MEAWA story reports that Zain has had Nokia-Siemens Networks and Motorola deploy HSPA in key cities in anticipation of high demand for beoadband services with mobility, the pent up appetite for which has possibly been frustrated by slow DSL rollout by incumbent STC.

The MEAWA story goes on to note that Zain has embarked on a number of different technology paths across its footprint. For example, in Kuwait, Zain's original 'home market', the operator has launched a 7.2Mbps HSPA network that enables video calling, streaming TV and sports footage and movie-clip downloads. Customers there use a Huawei HSDPA dongle. This seems to work well in tiny Kuwait, which accounts for only 3% of the group's subscription count but one-fifth of its revenues.

MEAWA notes that in Suadan, Zain has launched a 3.5G network in the capital capital, Khartoum, and runs both HSDPA and WiMAX networks in the tiny Gulf state of Bahrain.

In the longer term, writes Reed, Zain plans to deploy wireless-broadband services in many more countries, and is looking out for WiMAX licenses in several African countries.

It is proving very enjoyable to navigate my way around these varied market. I am confident that those of you who join us in Dubai in December will see the diversity of market conditions and operators' technology choices fully reflected in a compelling conference agenda.