3G coverage widens across former Soviet Union

Telecoms.com reported yesterday that one of Russia's big three cellcos has stolen a march on its competitors in terms of extending 3G coverage to part of Siberia and the far east of the Russian Federation. The MTS W-CDMA footprint now reaches the cities of Novosibirsk, Norilsk and Vladivostok with HSPA-enabled services.

As we prepare for the two Com World Series conferences which gather telco execs from CIS markets, I shall be asking whether discussions around extending 3.5G to these markets' outlying regions remains a hot enough topic to warrant significant talking time. The first of these will be our annual Eurasia Com event in Istanbul (next: March 2009), where delegates from the host country's telecoms operators are joined by colleagues from the Caspian Sea region (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) and the five other former Soviet Republics of Central Asia - the markets I've taken to calling the 'the Stans' for short: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan etc.

MTS also has 3G deployment plans in that part of the world. The company holds 3G licenses in Uzbekistan and Armenia, where I believe the networks are scheduled for launch in 2009. As far as I know, that would put MTS first-to-market with 3G services in both countries.

However, W-CDMA networks have been live for some time in other parts of the region. I've twice had the pleasure of meeting David Lee, the British CEO of Metromedia-owned Magticom, one of Georgia's three MNOs. David has been kind enough to participate at both Eurasia Com and the Moscow-hosted Russia & CIS Com. Magticom was a 3G early mover, starting work on its W-CDMA network in 2005. At both conferences, David shared some useful insights his team has picked up along the way. By December 2006, our WCIS database was indicating that Magitcom's Turkcell/TeliaSonera-backed rival Geocell had its first few 3G subscriptions.

Tajikistan was also an (unlikely-seeming?) 3G pace-setter, with Babilon Mobile going first-to-market in 2005.

As preparations get underway for Eurasia Com 2009, I look forward to reacquainting myself with all these developments in the coming weeks. It's a fascinating region.

A new day, a new WiMAX deployment announcement... oh, and another one...

Here at Informa Telecoms & Media, we are certainly gaining from the continued interest in the WiMAX. Our partnership with the WiMAX Forum to deliver the IEEE 802.16 industry's de facto global meeting place in Amsterdam has been very successful. The team responsible have also created a roadshow of region-specific WiMAX events in Latin America, Asia, and another coming up to cover the hotly-tipped Russia/CIS market. The speaker line-up and agenda for the latter, which takes place in Moscow next month, looks very good value. I hope to travel out there to meet executives from the likes of Enforta, Trivon, Synterra, Comstar and Golden Telecom.

This will be useful because shortly I am scheduled to initiate the programme of research and speaker acquisition leading to the development of the Com World Series team's annual Eurasia region conference and exhibition in Turkey. The relevance of getting one more chance to make further connections in Russia is that the CIS markets from which our Eurasia event gathers delegates are a natural place for Moscow-headquartered telcos to grown their footprints. In mobility, MTS and Vimpelcom have been particularly active in terms of snapping up existing MNOs in these markets, or winning new licences and building new operators from scratch. Perhaps WiMAX-deploying broadband service providers from the Russian Federation will follow this lead. That's a question I'll be keen to ask if I do make the trip to the WiMAX event in Moscow next month.

When we needed to rebrand our former GSM>3G Central Asia conference two years ago, 'Eurasia' was the best term we could find to cover a wide region which takes in Turkey itself, the area around the Caspian Sea and the former Soviet states of Central Asia. Happily, our preferred term maps quite neatly onto how this huge area is described by one of the telcos most active in that territory. TeliaSonera has a dedicated Eurasia Business Area, headed up by Tero Kivisaari. TeliaSonera are joint owners (with Turkcell) of Fintur Holdings, which in turn owns a number of mobile operators in CIS markets - Azercell (Azerbaijan), K'Cell (Kazakhstan), Moldcell (Moldova) and Geocell (Georgia). Two further MNOs are owned directly by TeliaSonera but managed by the Fintur JV with Turkcell. These are Ucell (Uzbekistan) and Indigo-Somoncom of Tajikistan.

I met Fintur's then-newly appointed CMO Gary Koeb at Eurasia Com 2008 back in April and look forward hopefully to involving the various companies under the Fintur umbrella more closely in 2009 than in previous iterations of the conference.

There has been evidence of some interest inWiMAX in the Eurasia region. Planned and actual deployments include:

• Cornet (Armenia)
• AZ Qtel (Azerbaijan)
• Babilon-T (Tajikistan)
• MTS Uzbekistan

The list is growing. This week, Alcatel-Lucent announced a deal to supply a mobile WiMAX network to Delta Telecom of Azerbaijan. I expect discussions around the business case for WiMAX deployment in these markets (for MNOs, for start-ups, for the incumbent state-owned wireline carriers) to form a pretty significant component of the agenda at our next Eurasia Com conference. So these are the kinds of regional pioneers we will be looking to involve. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, MNO Mobily of Saudi Arabia recently announced the launch of WiMAX services in four cities, which is apparently the first stage of a plan to cover the entire Kingdom in broadband wireless. This story was picked up by our Global Mobile Daily service on 3rd September.

WiMAX announcements seem to be popping up all over the regions we cover via the Com World Series. Expect to see that reflected at the shows.

US cellular pioneer urges US carriers to go (back) to emerging markets

There seem to be some interesting messages in John Stanton's speech at last week's CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment show in San Francisco. Stanton's profile is such that his comments are bound to hit the headlines, as with this write-up from the Register. Stanton was co-founder of pioneering US wireless carrier McCaw Cellular. Cade Metz, the Register's man at the event in San Francisco, says that Stanton "questioned the sanity" of the T-Mobile US, Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel CEOs who had "spent the morning discussing their gradual transition to... networks that accept any device and any application".

Stanton articulated the view that this approach is tantamount to making the mobile operator an access provider, stating that access is (or is fast becoming) a commodity business. He argues that "if you become a pure access technology, in a saturated environment, you’re ceding yourself to growing at the rate of the economy." Stanton feels that big European and Asian carriers are "already limited by economic growth.... and US carriers are well on their way to the same fate."

Metz reports Stanton's two suggested remedies for this. Firstly, US carriers need to "own significant content", something they have "essentially ceded... to the Googles". Secondly, Stanton invited US telcos to follow his lead by investing abroad.

The first point prompted a number of incredulous responses on the Register's comments page, mostly focused on how carriers worldwide have not fared well with a walled garden approach to mobile content. I can only add that in 6+ years of attending telecoms sector conferences and talking to telco execs, I've sensed more and more people coming around to the view MNOs are best advised to be good citizens in a multimedia ecosystem which involves content owners, aggregators, distributors etc. all getting their slice of the cake in exchange for bearing some of the risk around developing new products.

Stanton now oversees the Trinity Partnership, which invests in wireless-related companies and runs various international mobile networks, including Neuvatel PCS (Bolivia), Comcel Haiti. These two companies operate in markets where mobile penetration stood at, respectively, 45.11% and 37.29% by June 2008, according to Informa Telecoms & Media's WCIS. Clearly, there is a lot more room to grow here than in saturated Europe and near-saturated North America, hence Stanton's advice to his compatriots.

It's heartening to see someone so prominent talking up emerging telecoms markets as a smart bet. Here at Com World Series HQ, we also believe that developing markets worldwide are where the action is for telcos and their suppliers. We enjoy navigating the challenges of connecting these two groups in locations as diverse as Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro and Abuja, Nigeria.

While doing so, I've certainly observed that European and Middle Eastern telcos have a collectively much bigger presence in emerging markets than US companies. The latter seem to have been in retreat for some time. For example, in the few years I've covered telecoms markets in Eastern Europe, I've seen Metromedia International Group dwindle from a collection of cellular and broadcast radio assets around Russia, Kazakhstan and elsewhere. I believe the company's only holding in that region now is Georgian cellco Magticom. In South America, US household names such as Verizon and BellSouth have been divesting assets since earlier this decade.

Having not long returned from our Americas Com conference in Rio de Janeiro, and having toured a few South American countries earlier this year, I am struck by the strong position of Spain's Telefonica, Mexico's America Movil and, to a lesser extent, European players such as Telecom Italia, Portugal Telecom and Millicom International Cellular in the region.

John Stanton said last week "the major American companies have essentially retrenched, which means scale is going to be ceded to foreign companies." In the regions I cover, it feel like that has already happened.

Vodafone on the convergence trail in Qatar?

I am back in the UK, having spent much of last week at our annual Americas Com conference in Brazil. My marketing folks need me to write up the stories coming out of that gathering for our post-event press materials. Much of that can be re-purposed for this blog, so I'll share some of what I heard in Rio later this week.

I've returned to an interesting snippet of news from the Middle East.

We've known for some time now that Vodafone will be entering the Qatari mobile market. I understand that this is on track to happen in March 2009, despite reports earlier this year that a 2008 launch was on the cards. This week's news item concerns Vodafone's acquisition of a fixed-line licence in Qatar, breaking the monopoly of state-controlled QTel, whose mobile business has also owned the whole market in the cellular space up until now.

Vodafone and its consortium partners prevailed over a number of other interested parties, including AT&T, Verizon, Batelco (Bahrain), Jordan Telecom and BT.

According to these reports, fixed-line services from Vodafone Qatar should come on line at some stage next year. I am not clear on whether there will be a significant gap between this and the launch of mobile services, but I will certainly be interested to see if Vodafone exploits what looks like a great opportunity to build a fully integrated FMC player from scratch. With no hard data to back my hunch, I minded to guess that plans could well be in place to build a single core network, an integrated billing system and all the other elements needed to offer services seamlessly across fixed and mobile networks. I wonder if from the very start the business will also be structured such as to avoid creating distinct fixed and mobile silos within the organisation. Having heard so many telco execs describing the myriad challenges around integrating previously distinct fixed and mobile business units, it would seem to make sense to avoid all of that from day one.

Whatever route the new Vodafone operator takes, the man at the helm is certainly someone I know to be a highly charismatic leader. Grahame Maher got the CEO role back in April this year, having previously led Vodafone's Czech Republic operator. Maher was in this role when I had the pleasure of meeting him last year and in 2006. For both my previous company and here at Informa Telecoms & Media, I was charged with developing and hosting CEE region conferences. Prague was the venue in both cases. Maher was a very persuasive and innovative speaker at these events, notably in 2006, when he eschewed the use PowerPoint slideware. He chose instead to work the room dressed in the jeans-and-a-sweater look seemingly still favoured by the top management at Vodafone CZ, this being something of a trademark kept on when the giant cellco acquired the former Oskar-branded operator from Telesystem International Wireless of Canada. Maher wanted to make the point that customers don't want to get their heads around complexity or to understand how services work. They want it all cheap and simple. To demonstrate this, Maher had plucked a young Vodafone customer from the streets of Prague and placed him among the grey-suited telecoms executives in the conference room. The young man was asked to stand up and was then bombarded with questions about his tariff, about access network technologies and more. Naturally, he failed to answer any of these questions in detail. But he did say he cared about price and didn't want to think too much about his Vodafone service.

Maher's new role in Qatar means we have had to look elsewhere for exciting speakers at this week's CEE Com conference (again in Prague), which kicks off tomorrow. I was not able to be there this year but know that our team at the event will be working hard to make the delegates' time in the Czech capital enjoyable as well as productive.

I am hopeful that Mr Maher may be able to join us at our Middle East event this December. I know he's great value on the panel of speakers so we will try to make that happen.

CDMA WLL carrier Itisaluna broadens Iraqi presence at GSM>3G Middle East discussions

The fact that I write this from Rio de Janeiro might seem to afford opportunities to say something about the many South American telcos whose representatives I will be meeting tomorrow and on Wednesday. I am out here for our annual Americas Com conference and exhibition, and look forward to the chance to meet old and new friends and contacts from here in Brazil and from markets such as Chile, Uruguary, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. Today, however, we are occupied with the very practical side of getting the event set up, overseeing the construction of the exhibition stands, registration desk etc. We are also recovering from the vast quantities of meat it's customary to tuck into here at dinner time, and from the strength of the caipirinhas. In case any of this is making European readers a little envious, I should point out that the sky outside today is a hazy pale grey and that it's been raining all morning.

Despite the fact that I can see the grey, choppy Atlantic breaking on the Rio beach from my hotel window, I find my thoughts on one the Middle East's more challenging telecoms markets. This is because I just got the very welcome news that the Iraqi contingent on the panel of speakers at our GSM>3G Middle East event in Dubai (December) has now grown to three in total. Having announced CxO-level participants from both Asiacell and Korek Telecom last week, I can now confirm that a further participant joining us from Iraq will be Suleiman Lamaani, CEO of Itisaluna.

Itisaluna focusses on the provision of fixed-wireless voice and date services, having deployed a nationwide CDMA2000 - EVDO Rev. A network. The company states on its website that "this... will help improve social stability in Iraq and contribute to economic growth."

The confirmation of Mr Lamaani's involvement is really gratifying news for me for three reasons. Firstly, Iraq has, I think, been under-represented at previous iterations of our Dubai event - I think we have been remiss in not giving more coverage to a market where the telecoms sector has achieved remarkable growth in the most challenging environment possible. Secondly, as we quoted above in the case of Itisaluna, operators in markets with such a troubled recent history are active, crucial contributors to improving social and economic conditions. So we want to celebrate that at our conference. If anything that happens during the event makes it easier for Iraqi telcos to do business or attract further investment, we will be very pleased with that outcome. Finally, though for the forseeable future, we have no choice but to continue to give our Dubai conference the GSM>3G brand name, we do want to extend the range of technologies and services discussed. Having signed up Bahraini WiMAX-er MENA Telecom last week, it's welcome news that Itisaluna are also joining what was once thought of as purely a GSM community gathering.

Millicom CEO: scale is not the key in Latin America, Africa

During the long run-in to next week's Americas Com conference in Rio de Janeiro, I naturally look fairly closely at the competitive landscape in most the countries of Latin America. In the mobile space, this can be summarised in many markets as a battle between varying combinations of three companies. Two of these are telecoms giants - America Movil and Telefonica. The third is a smaller business headquartered in Luxembourg, Millicom International Cellular.

Millicom, whose services across Latin America are branded Tigo, is present in El Salvador and Guatemala and Honduras, where its local operations are market leaders. In South America, the company is present in Bolivia, Colombia. and Paraguay. Millicom has the largest market share only in the last of these three South American markets.

Earlier this week, in an interview with Investor's Business Daily, Millicom CEO Marc Beuls denied that larger competitors enjoy overwhelming competitive advantages: "Size isn't a reason for any of our competitors to be more successful in these markets than us. In Latin America, we compete against two giants, America Movil and Telefonica. This industry has more to do with innovation and launching new products and services, not so much technology, because much of that is the same among operators."

Having visited two Tigo-branded cellcos' HQs back in April (in Paraguay and Bolivia), I was disappointed not to have secured the participation of either for next week's conference. Frankly, across the group (in Latin America, Africa and SE Asia) we find Millicom subsidiaries to be a little wary of speaking or otherwise having a very visible presence at our conferences. We hope to resolve that in 2009.

Beuls says that "it was only three years ago that we started focusing on Africa and began investing substantial amounts of money. We've been able to improve our market position in most markets, the only exception being Sierra Leone. In Ghana, our largest market in revenue, we're No. 2 out of four operators. We're No. 3 in Tanzania, with 22% share, and gaining ground on the two largest operators."

Noting Vodafone's move on the Ghanaian market, the interviewer asked Beuls whether bigger operators have an edge because they can purchase mobile phones in large volumes and sell them in retail stores priced as low as $20. Beuls responds: "We don't play the handset game. We don't sell any handsets in Africa. The handset supply is there. A lot of the phones you find at (retail) dealers are second-hand, used phones. You can get a mobile phone at any price, a used one for $10 or a new one for $200. There is no need to get involved in that part of the market, whereas in Latin America operators are involved in the phone business."

Buels was asked whether bigger groups enjoyed advantages around roaming. Zain's promotion of services across national boundaries was mentioned, something which is now more relevant for Millicom given the Kuwaiti-headquartered cellco's presence in some 15 African countries.

Beuls argues that in the prepaid segment in Africa there is not much value in roaming: "Those customers are not mobile, they're not traveling. Maybe they're going from town to town, but not out of the country."

I am not closely involved in our Africa-specific events. These are managed by my colleague Julie Rey. However, I am close enough to the action to say confidently that October's Africa Com conference in Cape Town looks set to be bigger, busier and more exciting than ever. I daresay some of the questions mulled over this week by Millicom's Beuls will be discussed on stage and offline at the event.

Bahraini WiMAX-er signs up for our Middle East speaker panel

Today I received the welcome news that MENA Telecom are to be represented at a high level on the panel of speakers at our December Middle East region telecoms conference/exhibition in Dubai. So I look forward to meeting the company's Deputy CEO Mr Laith Sadiq when we assemble the great and the good of the region's burgeoning telecoms sector.

When working out what to feature on this year's conference agenda, we got mixed reviews about the business case for WiMAX in the Middle East, with answers varying widely across markets and across the types of telecoms service provider with which we were having conversations. So it seems that there continues to be a live debate about the prospects for WiMAX technology in the region. With this in mind, we are sure that MENA Telecom will be a very useful contributor to the discussions. The Bahrain Tribune reported in July that the company was busily adding friendly user accounts during the testing phase of its new WiMAX 802.16e network. A full nationwide lauch is "on the horizon" according to the report.

Something I am not clear about is whether the company plans to enter the mobile services arena. Back in January, Informa Telecoms & Media's fortnightly research service 'Middle East and Africa Wireless Analyst' reported that the Bahraini Telecoms Regulatory Authority was considering whether to license a third mobile operator. The MEAWA story reported TWA frustration with relatively limited price and service competition. The small Gulf state's two current mobile players are the mobile arm of incumbent operator Batelco and the local subsidiary of the Zain group.

In the article, MEAWA's Matthew Reed speculated that Vodafone, which won the contest for Qatar's second mobile license might also be interested in Bahrain. Reed noted that both "both countries offer high ARPUs, have aggressive economic-development plans and are located in the strategically significant Gulf, midway between Vodafone operations in Egypt, Turkey and India."

I don't know how much signifance to attribute to the fact that one of the very first speakers to confirm his participation at our December conference was Hatem Dowidar, Vodafone's CEO of the Partner Markets area of the business. If the nature and extent of the giant global cellco's interest in the Gulf markets is unclear by December, I daresay some conference participants will ask Mr Dowidar for his opinion.

Reed also noted that Saudi Telecom, which had earlier won the another recent Gulf license contest, for the third operator in Kuwait, migth have Bahrain in its sights. However, Reed went on to note that "another option would be to remove the mobility restriction on fixed-wireless licenses, of which the TRA has issued two." The licensees? Mena Telecom and Zain. I really couldn't say how seriously this option is being considered now by the Bahrain TRA. Again, if this notion has any substance to it, I'd guess that some delegates at our event will attempt to probe MENA Telecom's Sadiq in Q&A sessions and/or offline during the many networking breaks.

Whatever happens in Bahrain between now and December, I am really pleased to have secured the participation of Mr Sadiq. Our event has rejoiced in the name GSM>3G Middle East for some years - and was known as GSM Middle East before that. We really need to think more broadly than that as network standards, services and business units converge everywhere, making the old fixed/mobile distinction fuzzier and fuzzier with each moment that passes.

LinkedIn: I'm a believer

Those of you who have not yet joined LinkedIn.com - I really urge you to do so. I can't overstate how useful it is in terms of keeping track of existing, valuable contacts as they move from job to job and country to country. Also, by establishing a presence on the site and offering something of value, any LinkedIn member can attract new contacts and new business opportunities.

Some weeks ago, I set up geography-specific networking groups associated with each of the Com World Series telecoms sector conferences of which I am the manager. So, I am now the 'owner' of networking and discussion groups for telecoms execs in the following regions:

• Central & Eastern Europe www.linkedin.com/e/gis/148983
• Russia & CIS www.linkedin.com/e/gis/148986
• Eurasia (Turkey, Caspian Sea region, Central Asia) www.linkedin.com/e/gis/149162
• Middle East www.linkedin.com/e/gis/148981
• Oceania www.linkedin.com/e/gis/148984
• Americas (Latin Ameria & Caribbean) www.linkedin.com/e/gis/139497

Having set these up, and focussing on the two regions (CEE and Americas) whose conferences were coming up soonest, I invited existing contacts to join. I am now attempting to stimulate useful discussion in these two groups - with some success in the case of the CEE group, where I posed a question about the growth prospects of DSL in the region.

The effect is viral. These two particular groups are now growing strongly, but not because of me taking the time to send out numerous further invitations to join. Instead, some of the new members (I guess well-liked, influential individuals) seem to attract further new members very quickly. Scenario: a high-placed exec from a Southeast European telco joins the group. Within days, colleagues from many parts of that company join our group and enjoy the networking and discussion opportunities offered.

Today I enjoyed one of the real benefits of all this. Back in June, I hosted our Russia & CIS Com conference in Moscow. One of the most compelling speakers was the then-General Director of Ukrainian CDMA operator PEOPLEnet. Given that the event had previously been branded GSM>3G Russia/CIS, and that we were keen to broaden the appeal very considerably beyond the GSM MNO space, PEOPLEnet was precisely the kind of business we wanted to have involved. That goes for next year's event too, so it's vital to stay on top of who is running the business. So you can imagine my pleasure on welcoming PEOPLEnet's recently appointed Marketing Director to our Russia & CIS Com LinkedIn group this afternoon. I was even more pleased by a brief exchange of correspondence following my welcome note. From this, I learned that the gentleman whose presentation so impressed me in Moscow back in June has moved on. I also learned the name of his replacement, and I hope I have been able to keep my new contact interested in joining us in Moscow in 2009 - and encouraging colleagues and partners to do likewise.

All of this is really just a bit of preaching from a LinkedIn evangelist. I genuinely believe everyone doing business across time zones, cultures and complex value chains owes it to themselves to take advantage of the Web 2.0 functionality of resources as useful as LinkedIn.

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.

Iraqi operator CxOs join speaker panel at GSM>3G Middle East

As my colleagues and I work to develop the Com World Series, one of the real pleasures of the job is getting the opportunity to meet people whose daily efforts are bridging the digitial divide in some of the most challenging markets imaginable. Anyone who has encountered Karim Khoja, CEO of Afghan mobile operator Roshan, will have been impressed by his passion for his company's contribution to the development of that troubled country. To my mind, Karim is rightly proud of running the one of Afghanistan's largest private employers and of the fact that a fifth of his workforce are women, something which was prohibited during the seven-year rule of the Taliban.


I have been fortunate enough to meet several members of Karim's management team, and have been interested to hear about the security and logistical challenges of living and working in Afghanistan. I have also met executives from Roshan's competitor Afghan Wireless. Their experiences are naturally pretty similar. As a daily communter into London, I am naturally in the habit of exchanging horror stories about travel delays and overcrowding with colleagues. The daily challenges faced by good folks at these two MNOs really do put my little travel problems in the shade.


Thus far, I have not had the chance to learn from telecoms people in the other country most associated in the popular imagination with conflict and a perilous security situation - Iraq. Today it looks as though that is set to change.


I recently asked my colleague Emily Cottam to assist me with gathering CxO-level speakers from a list of operators and countries that have traditionally been under-represented at our annual GSM>3G Middle East conference in Dubai (this year 15-16 December). Emily today received the welcome news that two of the mobile operators in Iraq have confirmed their participation. So, in December we be joined by Dr. Diar Ahmad, CEO of Asiacell and Dr. Hameed Akrawi, Deputy CEO of Korek Telecom. We are encouraging both to focus their presentations on the matter of rapidly expanding network reach and service availability in a cost-effective manner.


Both of these companies started their operations in Iraqi Kurdistan. Asiacell is the older business, first established in 1999 by Iraqi businessman Mr. Faruk Mustafa Rasool. Initially, network coverage was primarily around the Kurdistani city of Sulaimaniya. Wataniya Telecom(40%) and the United Gulf Bank (9%) have since become shareholders. Since October 7, 2003, the Iraqi Ministry of Telecommunications has allowed Asiacell to operate across Northern Iraq and expand into the rest of the country.


Korek Telecom, meanwhile, has continued to confine its operations to its home territory of Kurdistan. However, this looks set to change. Korek now has a national license but a network still limited to Iraqi Kurdistan. We understand that to maximise the value of the licence, Korek Telecom will need to expand to national coverage, maybe as part of a JV withEtisalat, which would give Korek access to the UAE incumbent's resources and international operating expertise to roll out a countrywide network that could compete with Zain and Asiacell. Given that both Korek Telecom and Etisalat will both be present at our conference in December, we get some clarity on that then if not before.