Late last month, I received the notes put together by the Sao Paolo-based research team who have been busily preparing for this year's Americas Com event (30 June & 1 July, Rio de Janeiro). My Brazilian colleagues have been asking which hot topics should form the basis of the conference agenda, directing their questions to managers and strategists from telcos across Latin America.
One suggestion from respondents is that we include a round table session on the practicalities of implementing Mobile Number Portability (MNP). MNP was officially launched in Mexico in July last year, following a number of delays. In Honduras, the national telecoms regulator Conatel launched a public consultation on MNP in September, initially allowing operators Tigo, Claro, Hondutel and new entrant Digicel to consider proposals and offer comments. As of September 2008, Conatel had not yet made public a timetable for MNP. In the region's largest market, Brazil, the regulatory agency required the country's MNOs to go live with MNP by September 1 2008.
The roundtable suggestion seems to be a good one - we could have the optimum mix of participants with recent experience of MNP and others with a pressing need to anticipate the business and technical challenges.
Meanwhile, MNP appears to be causing some degree of controversy in India. Yesterday's Global Mobile Daily had news of the country's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) planning to begin accepting bids from applicants hoping to act as MNP clearing houses by mid-January. Bids are due to be opened on February 5th, according to local reports. The GMD piece goes on to say that "the DoT still faces key questions before it introduces MNP, most notably whether CDMA
operators will be able to automatically transfer their subscribers across to GSM services, a move strongly opposed by GSM players who say that CDMA players will transfer subs en masse to try and secure additional GSM spectrum."
I imagine that one CDMA player that could seek to gain from this alleged wheeze would be Reliance, which has finally launched its GSM services in the blue-chip market of Mumbai and has launched into the market with an aggressively priced plan offering subs free airtime worth NR10 S$0.21) per day for the first 90 days of a new subscribers' contract after an initial charge of just INR25. Reliance is offering new GSM subs local call rates of INR0.01 per minute and STD call ates of INR1.50 per minute with subs able to top up their accounts with prepaid packs offering NR10 to INR500 of value once they have used their daily free allowance. In addition, Reliance SM subs will get free unlimited talk time on the company's GSM and CDMA networks between 2200 and 0600 throughout Mumbai, Goa and Maharashtra. Reliance says it will be announcing additional prepaid tariff plans over the next three months.
In case you're surprised by the amount of detail in the above paragraph, I should admit to having grabbed most of it from the same edition of Global Mobile Daily. I won't pretend suddenly to have become an expert on the Indian mobile scene. That said, I did enjoy a (too) short stint in charge of our India & South Asia event and it was with regret that I ceded the territory to a colleague as part of a reorganisation in the Com World Series team last year. It was an exciting part of the world in which to make contacts and do business and I maintain an interest in developments there. For other readers who can say the same, I do recommend attending this year's India & South Asia Com, held once again in Mumbai - 12-13 May are the dates for your diary.
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
2 Jan 2009
Russia's MTS brand to expand beyond CIS footprint
The new year finds me fully focused on preparations for our Russia/CIS Com event in Moscow (2-3 June 2009). Having conducted primary research in December, we will now be concentrating on making sure that the region's major telcos are represented at a high level at this year's gathering. While doing this, I naturally find my eye drawn to stories from Russia when reviewing the various telecoms news sources.
One such, from Cellular News, concerns the planned entry of Russia's MTS brand (mobile market leader with 33.85% of subs according to WCIS) into India. The Cellular News piece notes that "Shyam Telelink, which is controlled by Russia's Sistema has announced plans to use the brand-name of the Russian mobile network operator, MTS in the Indian market. MTS is itself 52.8% majority-owned by Sistema."
The piece continues: "Sistema guaranteed US$520 million of the total US$630 million that Shyam Telelink paid for obtaining its operating licenses. The company recently used a call-option to increase its shareholding in India's Shyam Telelink from 51% to 72% - just shy of the 74% which is permitted under Indian laws."
With this in mind, we will look to encourage Mr Oleg Raspopov, Director of the MTS Foreign Subsidiaries Business Unit to attend our India & South Asia Com event inMumbai in May. Mr Raspopov is already confirmed as a speaker at the event which covers the markets in his home country's most obvious and immediate sphere of influence, the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caspian region. So I look foward to meeting him at Eurasia Com 2009, March 31 & April 1 in Istanbul.
One such, from Cellular News, concerns the planned entry of Russia's MTS brand (mobile market leader with 33.85% of subs according to WCIS) into India. The Cellular News piece notes that "Shyam Telelink, which is controlled by Russia's Sistema has announced plans to use the brand-name of the Russian mobile network operator, MTS in the Indian market. MTS is itself 52.8% majority-owned by Sistema."
The piece continues: "Sistema guaranteed US$520 million of the total US$630 million that Shyam Telelink paid for obtaining its operating licenses. The company recently used a call-option to increase its shareholding in India's Shyam Telelink from 51% to 72% - just shy of the 74% which is permitted under Indian laws."
With this in mind, we will look to encourage Mr Oleg Raspopov, Director of the MTS Foreign Subsidiaries Business Unit to attend our India & South Asia Com event inMumbai in May. Mr Raspopov is already confirmed as a speaker at the event which covers the markets in his home country's most obvious and immediate sphere of influence, the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caspian region. So I look foward to meeting him at Eurasia Com 2009, March 31 & April 1 in Istanbul.
31 Dec 2008
2008: meeting the challenges; 2009: more of the same
It's probably not very hard to work out that one reason for my writing this blog is to raise the profile of our Com World Series suite of telecoms sector discussion/networking/exhibition events. However, were I to do nothing more than copy text from our marketing materials and paste it here, I daresay I would get bored even faster than anyone reading these entries. For me at least, it's been fun to look out for telecoms-related news and then relate it to accounts of the people we meet and the things we hear while creating and attending these gatherings.
Reading back over my posts, I do notice that the need to promote our conferences seems to lead to my adopting a fairly optimistic tone when describing developments in the emerging markets in which we, our delegates and sponsors/exhibitors do business.
I make no excuses for this. A big part of my team's work is to keep reminding telecoms tech vendors of the technology requirements of operators in higher growth markets. We then strive to persuade the vendors that two days at a Com World Series show, meeting representatives of telcos from all over the region it serves, represents a time-efficient and cost-effective route to market. It therefore comes naturally to us to be bullish about growth prospects in the parts of the world in which we connect vendors with their customers and prospective customers.
However, in order to do this, I don't believe we have to misrepresent the positive buzz we experience in our conference rooms and exhibition areas. As recently as Saturday last week, I noted the optimism expressed by speakers at this month's Middle East region Com World Series event in Dubai.
However, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that this has been a challenging year for many of the people with whom we engage worldwide. If I were to confine my reading to telecoms industry news sources, I might be seduced into thinking that the countries and regions in which our friends and partners work are places typified by glad tidings of subscriber growth and market liberalisation. Of course, it's not possible to keep an eye on these parts of the world without getting a wider sense of what life there is really like. By talking with telecoms people from around the world, I am fortunate enough to hear from primary sources about the more difficult aspects of living and working in their various home (and adopted) countries. This adds colour and detail to the items I see on the TV news. More importantly, I get to see sensible people who go about their business very effectively in challenging environments. Further, the efforts of these people are combining to catalyse positive change - I am thinking in terms of things like:
A news item which resonated for me last week was one picked up by myriad telecoms blogs and news portals, orginiating, I believe from this Reuters report. This was widely covered, so I won't repeat every detail here. To summarise, the story concerns a Nokia store in India being attacked by protestors enraged by the fact that the handset maker's mapping software shows Indian-claimed Kashmir as being within the borders of Pakistan. I was immediately reminded of a similar problem experienced by the Com World Series team. Some time ago, brochures were designed to promote our annual India & South Asia region event. One graphic element of the brochure was a map of the region from which delegates were to be gathered. The designer unwittingly committed much the same faux pas with regard to Kashmir as Nokia's mappers seem to have done. A contact in India was kind enough to point this out before the brochures were put in the mail - but once they had been printed... you live and learn...
Last week's Reuters story notes that "political sensitivities are an increasing problem for map making software vendors - such as how to deal with disputed borders or even national claims on areas such as Taiwan or Cyprus", going on to add that "back in 2001, Panasonic had a 12 month ban import imposed on it for selling phones in China which listed Taiwan as a separate country on the internal phonebook."
Our business has faced more serious and more costly problems than that in 2008. For example, the 2009 iteration of the India & South Asia conference, which was meant to take place early in the new year, has been pushed back to May as a result of the recent terrorist attack on Mumbai, the host city for the event. This is not without precedent. Earlier this year, our East Africa Com event was shifted from Nairobi to Dar es Salaam as a result of the unrest in Kenya following on from the disputed election results of December 2007.
On my own travels, I was lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks roaming around South America this year, working to boost attendance at our annual Americas Com event. One stop on the tour was Bolivia, where I visited operators in two cities, Santa Cruz and Cochabamba. In both of these, we could not fail to notice signs of the differences over the exploitation of energy resources which underlie recurring political crises. My understanding is that there exists a resultant desire for greater autonomy for some of the country's regions. We saw a demonstration in one city and plenty of related grafitti in the other.
These observations notwithstanding, I am choosing to face 2009 with determination to overcome any obstacles to my own aims which created by economic turmoil and political conditions. This is made easier by the great spirit and good fellowship I find among many, many telecoms people worldwide who face far greater levels of challenge than I or my team ever have to detal with. On that note, I wish you all a Happy New Year.
Reading back over my posts, I do notice that the need to promote our conferences seems to lead to my adopting a fairly optimistic tone when describing developments in the emerging markets in which we, our delegates and sponsors/exhibitors do business.
I make no excuses for this. A big part of my team's work is to keep reminding telecoms tech vendors of the technology requirements of operators in higher growth markets. We then strive to persuade the vendors that two days at a Com World Series show, meeting representatives of telcos from all over the region it serves, represents a time-efficient and cost-effective route to market. It therefore comes naturally to us to be bullish about growth prospects in the parts of the world in which we connect vendors with their customers and prospective customers.
However, in order to do this, I don't believe we have to misrepresent the positive buzz we experience in our conference rooms and exhibition areas. As recently as Saturday last week, I noted the optimism expressed by speakers at this month's Middle East region Com World Series event in Dubai.
However, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that this has been a challenging year for many of the people with whom we engage worldwide. If I were to confine my reading to telecoms industry news sources, I might be seduced into thinking that the countries and regions in which our friends and partners work are places typified by glad tidings of subscriber growth and market liberalisation. Of course, it's not possible to keep an eye on these parts of the world without getting a wider sense of what life there is really like. By talking with telecoms people from around the world, I am fortunate enough to hear from primary sources about the more difficult aspects of living and working in their various home (and adopted) countries. This adds colour and detail to the items I see on the TV news. More importantly, I get to see sensible people who go about their business very effectively in challenging environments. Further, the efforts of these people are combining to catalyse positive change - I am thinking in terms of things like:
- how telecoms services reaching the world's less advantaged people quickly improves and enriches their lives
- microfinance initiatives, sachet pricing and other measures designed to make services more affordable
- green power technologies and innovative backhaul solutions designed to get services into remote and often impoverished areas
A news item which resonated for me last week was one picked up by myriad telecoms blogs and news portals, orginiating, I believe from this Reuters report. This was widely covered, so I won't repeat every detail here. To summarise, the story concerns a Nokia store in India being attacked by protestors enraged by the fact that the handset maker's mapping software shows Indian-claimed Kashmir as being within the borders of Pakistan. I was immediately reminded of a similar problem experienced by the Com World Series team. Some time ago, brochures were designed to promote our annual India & South Asia region event. One graphic element of the brochure was a map of the region from which delegates were to be gathered. The designer unwittingly committed much the same faux pas with regard to Kashmir as Nokia's mappers seem to have done. A contact in India was kind enough to point this out before the brochures were put in the mail - but once they had been printed... you live and learn...
Last week's Reuters story notes that "political sensitivities are an increasing problem for map making software vendors - such as how to deal with disputed borders or even national claims on areas such as Taiwan or Cyprus", going on to add that "back in 2001, Panasonic had a 12 month ban import imposed on it for selling phones in China which listed Taiwan as a separate country on the internal phonebook."
Our business has faced more serious and more costly problems than that in 2008. For example, the 2009 iteration of the India & South Asia conference, which was meant to take place early in the new year, has been pushed back to May as a result of the recent terrorist attack on Mumbai, the host city for the event. This is not without precedent. Earlier this year, our East Africa Com event was shifted from Nairobi to Dar es Salaam as a result of the unrest in Kenya following on from the disputed election results of December 2007.
On my own travels, I was lucky enough to spend a couple of weeks roaming around South America this year, working to boost attendance at our annual Americas Com event. One stop on the tour was Bolivia, where I visited operators in two cities, Santa Cruz and Cochabamba. In both of these, we could not fail to notice signs of the differences over the exploitation of energy resources which underlie recurring political crises. My understanding is that there exists a resultant desire for greater autonomy for some of the country's regions. We saw a demonstration in one city and plenty of related grafitti in the other.
These observations notwithstanding, I am choosing to face 2009 with determination to overcome any obstacles to my own aims which created by economic turmoil and political conditions. This is made easier by the great spirit and good fellowship I find among many, many telecoms people worldwide who face far greater levels of challenge than I or my team ever have to detal with. On that note, I wish you all a Happy New Year.
25 Sept 2008
Middle East face European competitors at home and go hunting for new markets worldwide
I expect the discussions and the audience profile at our annual GSM>3G Middle East event in Dubai to reflect the flow of strategic telecoms investment monies into and out of the Gulf region.
Vodafone is entering the Qatari market and is set to offer both mobile and fixed-line services. Turkcell has been interested in extending its footprint into the Middle East for some time. After an abortive attempt to enter the Iranian market in 2005-06, the Turkish MNO has more recently been rumoured to have an interest in Syria. Both of these companies are represented at CxO level at our conference.
Telcos headquartered in the Middle East, meanwhile, have been shopping for opportunities in emerging markets in other regions. For example, the African mobile scene is now dotted with subsidiaries of Zain, Etisalat and Comium.
The next target looks to be India. Telecoms.com yesterday reported Etisalat's agreement to buy 45% of Indian mobile operator Swan Telecom for $900m in cash, with the UAE telco's Chairman Mohammad Hassan Omran, commenting: "Our entry in India, one of the largest and fastest growing mobile markets in the world today, marks an acceleration of our expansion strategy and brings to us an opportunity which matches the scale of our ambitions."
Etisalat, leading sponsor of our December conference and exhibition in Dubai, will doubtless field many questions from participants about this and other elements of the company's international expansion strategy.
Vodafone is entering the Qatari market and is set to offer both mobile and fixed-line services. Turkcell has been interested in extending its footprint into the Middle East for some time. After an abortive attempt to enter the Iranian market in 2005-06, the Turkish MNO has more recently been rumoured to have an interest in Syria. Both of these companies are represented at CxO level at our conference.
Telcos headquartered in the Middle East, meanwhile, have been shopping for opportunities in emerging markets in other regions. For example, the African mobile scene is now dotted with subsidiaries of Zain, Etisalat and Comium.
The next target looks to be India. Telecoms.com yesterday reported Etisalat's agreement to buy 45% of Indian mobile operator Swan Telecom for $900m in cash, with the UAE telco's Chairman Mohammad Hassan Omran, commenting: "Our entry in India, one of the largest and fastest growing mobile markets in the world today, marks an acceleration of our expansion strategy and brings to us an opportunity which matches the scale of our ambitions."
Etisalat, leading sponsor of our December conference and exhibition in Dubai, will doubtless field many questions from participants about this and other elements of the company's international expansion strategy.
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