Orange to enter Armenian market?

While conducting our research into developments across the Caspian Sea and Central Asia regions, we've dug out some interesting nuggets of information and opinion from a number of the individual markets concerned. Expect to see all of this reflected in the theme of the discussions at our annual Eurasia Com conference in Istanbul, 31st March & 1st April 2009.

One country we've found particularly fruitful in terms of research respondents is Armenia. One respondent there seems quite confident that the country's mobile market will be joined by a new player in the near future and that the new entrant will be Orange. The France Telecom cellular brand is not a total stranger to former Soviet territory, having established a foothold in Moldova, via the 2007 rebranding of Voxtel. Our friend in Armenia also felt that the entrant is likely to deploy WiMAX in additon to a GSM/W-CDMA network.

Armenia, home to fewer than 3.5 million people, is not a huge market to split between three mobile operators. In the context of the region around it, the country has also been quite well penetrated by the existing two MNOs, one of which is a part of the MTS empire. The other, Armentel (now branded Beeline) is the incumbent fixed-line operator as well as offering mobile services. Beeline, a well-known name across CIS markets, is the brand of the company's new owners, Vimpelcom of Russia.

I wonder, therefore, what any new entrant will be planning in terms of ways to grab market share from these two established players.

3G, MNP, MVNOs set to shake up Turkish mobile market?

Preparations are now well underway for our annual Eurasia Com conference, the next iteration of which will take place 31st March & 1st April 2009 at the Mövenpick Hotel in Istanbul. I am pleased that after two years of hosting this event in venues on the fringes of the world's third largest city, we are now able to hold the discussions and networking in a more central location. Next year's venue is in easy striking distance of the Taksim Square shopping and entertainment hub at the heart of Istanbul. This will make life easier for sponsors and exhibitors looking to entertain telco operator clients in the evenings and should boost the number of visitors we get from the many Turkish telco sector companies with headquarters in the city.

The conference is definitely a draw for major Turkish telcos. In the last two years, we've welcomed luminaries such as Tayfun Çataltepe (Chief Strategy/International Expansion Officer at Turkcell), Tulin Karabuk (Chief Investment Officer, Turkcell) and Mehmet Toros (COO, Türk Telekom). However, many of our sponsors support the event not only to reach out to Turkish companies, but also to tap into the high growth CIS markets of the Caspian Sea region and Central Asia. We therefore need to make the event attractive for visitors from these countries. While a pleasant downtown location is perhaps not the most important factor, it can't hurt - so I was happy to shower praise on our operations/venues people for securing this welcome upgrade.

I've been joined this week by a newly-hired Russian-speaking colleague who, as I write this, is on the phone gathering the lastest market intelligence from countries including Azerbijan, Georgia, Armenia and Kazakhstan. Every day, I am handed valuable nuggets of information which will definitely impact on the content and format of the Eurasia Com conference agenda. We are getting a clearer sense than ever before of the challenges and opportunities facing operators in these markets and I think we now know what to do in terms of creating a must-attend event which should gather the region's telcos in ever better numbers.

Meanwhile, I am catching up with contacts in Turkey, with a view to finding out which issues are keeping telco execs in that country awake at night. One of the most interesting conversations I've had this week was with someone at one of Turkey's mobile services distributors. Among the things I was told:

• Mobile Number Portability will be implemented very soon; my respondent felt that the country's 3rd placed mobile operator is welcoming this as a great opportunity to build market share through more aggressive competition on price.
• Two of Turkey's three MNOs are testing their 3G networks, which my respondent expects to go live in Q2 2009; my respondent predicts that Turkcell will move fastest to get the networking up and running, largely because of an urgent need to address network capacity issues.
• After some buzz of interest in the possible launch of MVNOs, there is now concern that the current tax regime is set to make the business case less attractive that once hoped.

The next time I get the opportunity to write something here, I aim to share a few snippet about what's happening across the wider Eurasia region our conference and exhibition will serve.

Catching up on developments across Eurasia

We will very shortly be getting to work on the arrangements for our 5th annual Eurasia Com conference and exhibition in Turkey. The event will take place 25-26 March 2009, with Istanbul being the host city for the third consecutive year, following on from an initial two years in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

For us, the term 'Eurasia' maps quite closely to TeliaSonera's use of this sometimes ambiguous word. With reference to the company's TeliaSonera Eurasia business area, the giant Scandinavian telco, like us, seems to use the term 'Eurasia' in the geopolitical sense, i.e. as a (neutral) way of referring to the post-Soviet states, in particular the Central Asian republics and the Transcaucasian republics.

So, our Eurasia Com conference, as well as attracting plenty of delegates from the host country's operators (Turkcell, Turk Telekom, Avea etc.), is really designed to offer networking and learning opportunities to execs from the service providers of Caspian states (Armenia, Azerbijan, Georgia) and 'the -stans' of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. Mongolian delegates have also shown up in pretty good numbers for the last two years.

We find that a number of tech vendors we speak with find this to be an interesting but challenging region. Growth potential is good: mobile markets are some way from reaching European-levels of penetration, 3G networks are not yet ubiquitous, wireline teledensity is quite low. However, my own experiences of developing contacts in this part of the world make me realise that it's not always easy for some companies to explore the possibilities and do business with the operators that are taking advantage of the growth opportunities. So we believe that our event offers a uniquely valuable one-stop shop for vendors looking to make improve their connections in this region.

I am therefore working to catch up with any interesting developments that have taken place across these markets since we last visited Istanbul in April this year. A notable one is TeliaSonera's integration of two previously separate mobile operators in Tajikistan, Indigo and Somoncom. These two companies were among the assets the Scandinavian telco acquired when it bought U.S.-based MCT Corp. back in 2007. MCT also had stakes in Coscom of Uzbekistan (now rebranded UCell) as well as a smaller stake in Roshan of Afghanistan. According to a Global Mobile Daily report last week, Ucell have just launched 3G services in the cities of Tashkent and Samarkand. This leaves Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan as the region's markets that had not reported W-CDMA subscriptions to the World Cellular Information Service by June of this year. Turkey's 3G licensing process has been much delayed so, overall, I expect Eurasia Com to be attended by a lot of delegates who have yet to gain extensive experience working in a market where 3G services are available. If that translates into pent-up demand to learn from colleagues who do have useful experiences and insights to offer, we should see very lively networking and discussions.

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.

Etisalat to do battle with Zain in Iraq?

Much as Iraq is rarely out of the news, the country is rarely very far from my thoughts at the moment as we gear up for our GSM>3G Middle East event in Dubai this December.

I was prompted to think again about Iraq this morning by a call confirming a meeting tomorrow with Bob Fonow, now working with broadband service provider Trivon, which operates under the Virgin Connect brand in Russia. Bob has lately been an enthusiastic and high-value speaker at a number of Informa Telecoms & Media conferences, including some of our Com World Series gatherings. In a previous role, Bob was a Senior U.S. State Department official responsible for telecommunications reconstruction in Iraq, acting as a Senior Adviser to the Minister of Communications and Chief Executive of the Communications and Media Commission. In this role, Bob managed a staff of US State Dept technical experts and was responsible for funding decisions and program management of US funded telecom programs. Following that assignment, Bob was hired to mediate a dispute between the Iraqi shareholders of Zain Iraq and Zain's executive management in Kuwait concerning the provision of physical security for Zain's combined MTC Atheer and Iraqna GSM networks.

I am looking forward to learning a lot from Bob tomorrow. I think my questions will focus on two areas. Firstly, as my thoughts turn to our 2009 Russia & CIS Com conference, I'll be keen to get some fresh insights on the Russian broadband market and the currently high level of hype about the prospects for WiMAX in Russia. Secondly, ahead of the Dubai event, I'll be keen to get Bob's thoughts on the potential and the challenges of the Iraqi market. It will be good to get a solid briefing before meeting the several high-level execs who will be representing Iraqi operators on the panel of speakers in Dubai. These include Suleiman Lamaani the CEO of Itisaluna (an emerging nationwide operator providing fixed-line voice services, broadband, and VAS via CDMA 1x-EV-DO Rev. A) and CxOs from GSM operators Korek Telecom and Asiacell. Looking ahead to the future development of our event, it is my theory that vendor interest may become very sharply focused on under-connected, under-penetrated markets such as Iraq and Iran, whose incumbent mobile operator MCI will be represented at this year's conference by CEO Vahid Sadoughi. This may become a matter of urgency for network tech vendors as the oil-rich Gulf states' mobile markets all reach saturation point and 3G networks there achieve wide coverage.

Certainly, the Iraqi market is already a priority for giant rival Middle Eastern telcos. Zain is already present and I read today in a Cellular news story the UAE-based Etisalat is reported to be in talks to acquire an Iraqi mobile operator by the end of this year. The story quotes Etisalat COO Ahmad Julfar: "Iraq has a lot of potential because of the unavailability of fixed-line telephones because of war conditions."

Given the strong interest in Iraq from around and beyond the region, I am really glad that we've managed to get the Iraqi market so well represented on our panel of speaker for the Dubai show.

Russian telcos heading for Africa?

While I still have my hands full preparing for our GSM>3G Middle East conference in December, I will shortly be turning my attention more fully to Russia and the CIS. We host two gatherings in the first half of the year which are designed to draw together telecoms execs from markets across the former Soviet Union. The first, Eurasia Com, takes place in Istanbul in March, a natural travel and business hub for the Caspian and Central Asian regions the event serves. Further, Istanbul-headquartered Turkcell is a major player in these markets. The Turkish cellco is co-owner (with TeliaSonera) of Fintur Holdings, a company which manages MNOs in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan as well as Moldova. It's therefore important for the event that we get high-level support from Turkcell. In 2008, the company's Chief Strategy Officer Tayfun Cataltepe was among our speakers - and has gone on to become a valued supporter of the wider Com World Series. The previous year, we welcomed Turkcell's Chief Investment Officer Ms. Tulin Karabuk.

Coming up in June, we have another CIS-focused meeting: Russia & CIS Com in Moscow. This gets a different crowd - delegates mainly from the Russian Federation itself, as well as from Ukraine and Belarus. Regarding the latter country, we really boosted the level of the participation. Belarus's incumbent carrier Beltelecom was represented by General Director Konstantin Tikar, who made some very kind comments abou the usefulness of the trip.

At the last two iterations of Russia & CIS Com, we've heard more and more about the plans of some Russian cellcos in terms of exploring the growth potential of markets outside their usual CIS footprint. Earlier this year, a delegation from Iran was very visible, clearly hoping to remind prospective strategic investors of the impending sale of a 3rd national mobile licence in the Islamic Republic. We've also seen Russian telco people showing up at a conference we used to run in Vietnam, clearly interested in that particular market.

It wasn't, therefore, a big surprise to see a news item this morning which indicates that Russian telecoms investment firm Altimo has expressed an interest in Nigerian operator M-Tel/NITEL. We'll encourage Altimo and other Russian groups to get involved at our huge annual pan-Africa event in November: www.ComWorldSeries.com/africa.

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.