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:

• 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

In this final blog entry of 2008, then, I find myself reflecting on the signs of trouble in the world of which my globe-trotting makes me more aware.

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.

Etisalat, Zain presence boosted at GSM>3G Middle East event

With 18 days to go before our annual Middle East region event, we have news of very welcome late additions to the panel of speakers, adding further value to an already strong conference programme.

Zain's presence at the event has been boosted further by confirmation that the CEO of the group's Saudi Arabia operation, Dr Marwan Al-Ahmadi, will be making a presentation to open the second day of the event (16 December). Zain's KSA operation only went live as recently as August 26, joining the group's 'one network' borderless roaming service. Given the newness of this business unit, we expect there to a very strong interest from delegates keen to evaluate the progress made by Dr Marwan's team in the first few months of commercial operation.

Another group involved closely with this year's GSM>3G Middle East conference is Etisalat. The UAE's leading telecoms service provider, and an endorsing sponsor of our event, Etisalat has subsidiaries in markets including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt. Representing the group on the panel of speakers will be Mr Nasser Bin Obood, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer and Mr
Mr Ali Amiri, Executive Vice President Carrier & Wholesale.

I also wanted to point out that our friends at the UMTS Forum and GSA (Global Mobile Suppliers' Association) are jointly hosting a workshop, immediately following the conference on 17 December. The workshop is designed to provide attendees with information and insights on the benefits of deploying WCDMA/HSPA in the 900MHz band, including increased coverage and in-building penetration, as well as lower CapEx and OpEx relative to WCDMA/HSPA deployed at 2100MHz. The workshop will also address the challenges faced by operators in deploying UMTS900, including fragmented spectrum allocations and co-existence with GSM900.
Regulators and senior decision makers involved in the areas of network strategy and deployment, including CTOs, Strategy and Planning Directors, Spectrum Technology Managers, Senior Engineers and Network Architects, as well as Marketing and Product Management personnel, will benefit from attending.

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.