Telco sector bigwigs converge on Istanbul

Doing telco sector business in Turkey, the Caspian region or Central Asia?
......head for Eurasia Com at Istanbul's Conrad Hotel this March.

A belated Happy New Year to all loyal readers of (and occasional visitors to) DevelopingTelecomsWatch.

I daresay some of you will have found 2009 above-averagely challenging and are looking forward hopefully to a more prosperous and settled year ahead.

With this in mind, DTW will soon be evaluating some predictions about what 2010 may have in store for those of us with an interest in the telecoms sector in emerging markets and developing countries worldwide.

In the meantime, we will be using the announcement of the conference agenda for this year's Eurasia Com conference in Istanbul as the inspiration for a look around developments in Turkey, the Transcaucasus region and Central Asia. These are the markets from which the event gathers telecoms sector leaders for two days of discussions and networking.

My guess is that I will not be able to attend the conference - taking place at Istanbul's Conrad Hotel on 23-24 March - but I would definitely recommend it as a useful place to make new contacts and catch up with existing ones if you do business with the telecoms operators of that part of the world. I feel qualified to make this recommendation, having attended two iterations of the event, and having been involved in its development between 2006 and 2009.

This year's speaker panel includes a glittering array of telecoms leaders from both the host country and from numerous CIS markets. Those able to attend will have the opportunity gain a uniquely valuable opportunity to learn from these panellists - and some will doubtless advance their cases for doing business with the speakers' organisations.

While I daresay, however, that many of the presentations and public panel discussions will be somewhat insightful, my experience of attending many conferences has taught me that delegates can learn far more by being above-averagely proactive. This means being a real participant rather than a mere attendee. It means doing more than just scribbling/typing notes during the conference sessions. It means more than downloading the presentation slides.

So, if you make it to the Conrad Hotel in Istanbul, be sure to come prepared with the questions you particularly want answered. Then make the effort to direct those questions to relevant speakers, keeping in mind that however effectively the sessions are moderated, there will not be time for the Chair to deal with everyone who has something to ask. Should your most urgent questions not get dealt with, be sure to be one of those confident people seen springing from a front row seat to shake hands and exchange business cards with the hottest speakers the second the session breaks for strong Turkish coffee. Then might be the time you will finally make your point or extract the answers you're looking for. Or your possibly rather sensitive enquiry might best be handled over that coffee and a piece of sweet, flaky baklava. Failing that, the business card you've gained could be the key to setting up post-event conversations.

Question time: get the answers over coffee and Turkish treats at Eurasia Com

Does this all sounds like advice that's basic to the point of being a bit patronising? I hope not. It is, after all, offered as a result of having watched countless conference delegates fail to maximise the value of the investment their companies had made by paying for them to attend - even with the free tickets for which employees of telecoms operators and service providers are eligible at Eurasia Com and other Com World Series events, some costs are implied, be it plane tickets and hotel bills for out-of-town delegates, or just the cost of being away from the day job.

If you do decide to attend, and do attend on a mission to learn about developments in the region covered by the conference, what questions might you direct to the numerous worthies on the speaker panel?

Given that the CIS markets of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus region were among the first places that Russia's major telecoms players looked for international growth opportunities, you would hope that Eurasia Com is able to offer access to their top management. The event does not disappoint - gracing the stage for the opening Keynote Session will be Mustafa Kiral, Vice President of Altimo and Oleg Raspopov, who heads up the 'Foreign Subsidiaries' Business unit of giant Russian cellco MTS.

Any industry watchers with a strong interest in the latter company, might be tempted to try and squeeze in a question about the operator's hopes for its mobile broadband offering in Moscow, now that 3G services can finally be made available in the Russian capital. A full year after 3G services were offered in other parts of Russia, Muscovites learned last month that the country's military authorties were finally ready to cede control of the necessary spectrum and enable operators to switch on their W-CDMA base stations.

Given Mr Raspopov's responsibilities, however, and given the geographical coverage of the conference agenda, perhaps it might be more germane for delegates to ask the MTS man whether his company has any interest in further extending its CIS footprint. At present, MTS subsidiaries compete in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Armenia. Away from the immediate focus region for this conference, further MTS business units operate in Ukraine and Belarus.

Strikingly absent from the MTS sphere of influence are two of the region's potentially more attractive markets - MTS does not compete in either Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan.

In June last year, MTS CEO Mikhail Shamolin told Reuters that his company was looking at acquisition opportunities in both countries, having decided that the prospects for a start-up operation were not good in either market.

It now appears, however, that the opportunity to make an acquisition in Kazakhstan has now passed. That country's mobile arena is contested by four operators, with the market split as follows, as of end-December 2009, according to the WCIS service offered by the organisers of Eurasia Com, Informa Telecoms & Media:

• Beeline Kazakhstan (Vimpelcom), 43.27% share
• KCell (TeliaSonera Eurasia/Turkcell), 42.87
• Neo, 7.29%
• Altel, 6.57%

The two leading mobile operators, then, are controlled by MTS's main rivals in the region and are therefore, surely, extremely unlikely targets for addition to Mr Raspopov's Foreign Subsidiaries Unit. Altel, too, as a rare example of a CDMA operator in the region, strikes me as a company one cannot easily imagine on the MTS shopping list.

Neo, a late entrant GSM operator which went to market in 2007, would be the logical choice for an MTS purchase. A majority stake in this cellco, however, is to be snapped up by Tele2, the Sweden-headquartered pan-European telecoms group. This transaction, as reported in December, involves Tele2 paying around USD 77 million for the 51% stake held by Kazakhstan's incumbent fixed line operator, Kazakhtelecom, which also owns 49% of KCell. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Tele2 has the option to buy the remaining 49% of Neo shares in five years' time from private investment group Asianet Holdings BV.

It will now be interesting to see how much Tele2 makes of the opportunity that MTS has declined to puruse in Kazakhstan. Interesting, too, to see how far the company's usual preference for competing aggressively on price will impact on the Kazakh market.

Speaking on a conference call, Tele2 said that Neo currently has lower prices and lower ARPU than its two larger rivals, so it remains to be seen whether tariffs can be cut further in order to gain market share. According to the WSJ article, a market share of 20% is what Tele2 has in mind.

Of further CIS markets likely to prove attractive to MTS, perhaps only Azerbaijan remain. A June 2009 article here at DTW noted that the Caucasus region country, although quite small with a population of just under 9 million, is oil-rich and relatively prosperous. It is notable, therefore, that of the three groups with footprints across the southernmost CIS markets, only the TeliaSonera-Turkcell joint venture Fintur Holdings has a presence - in the form of market-leading MNO Azercell, none of whose competitors are aligned with a significant multinational telecoms groups. Of these competitors, one will be represented at Eurasia Com by its CEO - Ineke Botter, who heads up Bakcell, is among the speakers. A cheeky question one might direct to Ms. Botter would be to ask whether she feels either her company or the third entrant, Nar Mobile, is a likely acquisition target for MTS or Vimpelcom, which similarly has no presence in Azerbaijan.

With Tele2 having seized the opportunity to move into the Kazakh market, conference delegates may be wondering what impact this may have on the country's telecoms landscape. Questions along these lines can be raised at Eurasia Com, the ideal time for this probably being a morning session on Tuesday 23rd March which deals specifically with the rapid maturation of the Kazakh telecoms market. Fielding the questions will be Kuanysbek Bahytbekovich Yesekeev, Chairman of that Kazakhstan Agency of Information Technologies and Telecommunication, and Maxut Sauranbekov, President of CDMA operator Altel.

A new feature of the conference this year is a day two session focussing specifically on the Turkish market. A very strong line-up of speakers will be on hand to debate the key issues. These include:

• Erkan Akdemir, CEO of Avea, the mobile operator in which incumbent wireline telco Turk Telekom holds a controlling interest
• Mehmet Toros, Turk Telekom's VP International and Wholesale
• Tayfun Cataltepe, the Chief Corporate Strategy & Regulations Officer of market-leading MNO Turkcell
• John Samarron, CTO of Vodafone Turkey

This year's event looks set to be even more useful than previous iterations and I look forward to feedback from colleagues and contacts who are able to attend.

Telco sector bigwigs converge on Istanbul

Aptilo Networks positive about prospects for WiMAX in developing countries

Johan Terve, Aptilo Networks:
good opportunities for WiMAX in emerging markets

DevelopingTelecomsWatch was a proud media partner of this year's iteration of the annual Africa Com conference and exhibition held in Cape Town. The event concluded on Thursday this week, wrapping up two days of discussions and networking among the continent's telecoms operators and their business partners from the vendor and systems integrator communities.

One theme explored in some detail at the conference - via a special breakout session - was the question of to what extent WiMAX is gaining traction in Africa.

With this in mind, DTW spoke this week with Johan Terve, VP Marketing at Aptilo Networks, a supplier of pre-integrated management solutions for control of billing, user services and access in WiMAX and Wi-Fi networks. Aptilo Networks had a presence at Africa Com so we were keen to get a sense of whether this was indicative of an upbeat view of the scale of the WiMAX opportunity in Africa - and across developing countries and emerging markets more generally.

For proponents of WiMAX, the emerging markets opportunity may grow in importance - certainly if we are to believe bleak analyses of the technology's ongoing prospects in more developed economies. One such comes from Terry Norman of consulting and research firm Analysys Mason, who in August predicted a difficult time ahead for equipment makers.

Norman believes that "over the last two or three years, WiMAX has gained a strong foothold in developing countries in which there is a need for broadband, but the fixed infrastructure is poor." He feels, however, that these markets offer insufficient growth potential and size "to sustain continued investment from such heavyweights as Cisco Systems, Intel and Motorola without additional sales in the developed markets". Therein lies a problem, argues Norman, because "in the developed markets of Europe and the USA, we see some early signs of a difficult future for WiMAX."

One difficulty could be any reluctance on the part of of leading mobile operators to deploy the technology. Terry Norman writes that in developed European markets, operators are almost certainly upgrading their 3G technologies to 4G LTE in order to match the rising demand for data. Norman draws a connection between leading no leading MNOs hinting that they might adopt WiMAX and the idea that "LTE is imminent."

Johan Terve rejects the notion of that it being "too late" for WiMAX in developed markets. Terve feels that such language would suggest that "this is a race with a single winner". He believes the opposite to be true and that both WiMAX and LTE will co-exist just like xDSL and fiber do in the wired broadband world.

While Terry Norman of Analysys Mason was downbeat about the growth prospects for WiMAX in Europe and US but sounding somewhat positive about the case for the technology in emerging markets, some analysts are more cautious even about the latter opportunity.

A Cellular News article published last month asks whether there really is a big market for WiMAX in the developing countries. The article is built around opinions recently expressed by industry watchers Ovum, who find "that the confluence of several factors including technology cost, coverage, vendor support and service provider choices will limit WiMAX to only a niche technology in the emerging markets, forming part of established fixed and mobile operators' broader broadband access portfolios."

Johan Terve responded to this point by saying that "if they mean that WiMAX technology will be niche based on size, then there is an element of truth in that since in the end LTE will be bigger because of its massive support amongst mobile operators" and because "the industry expects LTE to be a replacement technology for 2G/3G mobile phones as well."

"The WiMAX market does not have the ambition to be a new mobile phone system", argues Terve. "In terms of pure mobile data technologies for portable laptops and mobile Internet devices," he continues, "the two markets will be more equal, and for the 'Wireless DSL' or CPE market WiMAX will probably be larger".

Last month's Cellular News article, however, contends that most emerging markets WiMAX operators currently have thousands, or tens of thousands of subscribers, rather than the hundreds of thousands of subscribers that they planned to have at this stage. DTW asked Johan Terve to what degree he is concerned by these modest numbers.

"We in the vendor community are always far more optimistic in growth projections than the reality," he answered. "The projections of rolled-out LTE networks and subscribers will most likely have to be revised down in the coming quarters. However, there is a big difference between LTE and WiMAX in that the tier 1 mobile operators already have a huge subscriber base just waiting for more bandwidth [and] disappointed with what the current 3G networks have been able to deliver. This will make the LTE ramp-up quicker than it has been for WiMAX having to deploy from scratch. Essentially all larger WiMAX operators are new to market, including Clearwire, PacketOne, Yota and UQ. None of them have the luxury of just adding WiMAX technology to existing cell towers. Are we concerned about WiMAX? No, we are seeing signs now within our customer and prospects base that things are really starting to move. One encouraging factor is, for instance, one of the largest operators in India that is currently deploying Aptilo’s solution. This type of operator tends to scale very quickly in terms of subscriber growth. As a company, we are continuing our multi-wireless support (currently Wi-Fi and WiMAX) and have added LTE to our roadmap to be able to cater to all the help operators need in managing their mobile data traffic."

Where, then, does Aptilo networks see some of the richest opportunities in Africa and in emerging markets more generally?

"We see the greatest opportunities with existing Internet Service Providers and new greenfield challengers in the first phase," says Johan Terve. "We also see a great opportunity with CDMA mobile operators that have hesitated to deploy EV-DO for broadband data services. Their strategy is to keep developing their voice offering in CDMA and then choose between LTE and WiMAX for data. For them LTE is a heavier fork-lift than for 3G operators and WiMAX has the benefit that it is here now, ready to deploy."

Could Terve point to any specific examples of this particular deployment scenario?

"We are currently working with one of our Caribbean CDMA mobile operator customers that will continue with their CDMA for voice and build their data broadband on WiMAX," he responded.

Aptilo Networks, then, is among those continuing to make positive noises about the value WiMAX may be able to add to the communications landscape of emerging markets and developing countries worldwide. It is likely this theme will be revisited when DTW reports on next year's Africa Com event, and it will be interesting to see how far this view has proven to be accurate by that time.

Aptilo Networks positive about prospects for WiMAX in developing countries

DevelopingTelecomsWatch: media partner of the Com World Series

I am delighted to announce that DevelopingTelecomsWatch is now an official media partner of the Com World Series, the suite of conference/exhibition/networking events hosted in high growth markets worldwide by Informa Telecoms & Media.

Each event involves:

• a conference featuring speakers from the operators and regulatory agencies of the region it covers - with operator speakers up to CEO level
• a conference agenda designed to give speakers and delegates the opportunity to discuss the most pressing issues facing the telecoms sector in the region concerned
• a wealth of networking opportunities
• a business model which enables the organisers to offer delegate passes free of charge to operators and regulators
• an exhibition supported by telecoms technology vendots, carriers' carriers etc.

Com World Series events take place throughout the year in locations including Cape Town, Cairo, Nairobi, Abuja, Istanbul, Dubai and Rio de Janeiro. Delegate numbers at the larger events are typically around the 3000 mark.

DevelopingTelecomsWatch will preview each event with a review of developments in the region concerned and rounding up news items about the participating companies.

DevelopingTelecomsWatch: media partner of the Com World Series

Zain Africa Speculation Watch: Episode 2

My reporting of last week's speculation about Zain selling its entire African portfolio certainly generated a decent number of hits for this blog. I daresay anyone else who blogged about it saw a spike in visitor numbers.

The chitchat on this topic continues this week, with Cellular News feeling around for an explanation for why Vivendi might have been named as a possible buyer, while conceding that we still only seem to have a single report from a Nigerian newspaper as a source for this (non?) story. Undeterred by this, the Cellular News folks wonder whether a Vivendi bid might have something to do with Vodafone eyeing Zain's African assets. The reasoning for this is as follows:

"Vivendi currently owns a 56% stake in French mobile network, SFR - with Vodafone holding the remainder. The joint shareholding in SFR will raise speculation that Vodafone is involved in the talks through its South African Vodacom subsidiary."

Last week, when reports began to surface of a "French company" being involved in all of this crazy hullabaloo, Vivendi was not the first name that sprang to my lips. Instead, I quickly voiced the thought: it has to be Orange. Several days later, with the scribes at Cellular News trying to find reasons for why Vodafone might be the real stalking horse, I am, frankly, none the wiser.

So I looked to my former employers for some inspiration, noting that the good people at telecoms.com have had the time to do a bit of asking around. None of this, however, visits the issue of who might be in the mix to pick up Zain's African operations. Instead the focus is on, why the hell the Kuwait-headquartered would be looking to get out of Africa, a move which the telecoms.com editoral team describe as going "against pretty much every noise the firm has ever made about its strategic ambitions", which is pretty much in line with the thoughts I articulated myself here last week.

The telecoms.com guys asked one of their Informa Telecoms & Media colleagues for her view, quizzing Thecla Mbongue, the firm's senior analyst covering Africa. Thecla was reported to be "bemused" but did reveal that she had picked up on some grumbling from Zain executives about governance problems in certain African countries. This was communicated to Thecla at a "recent ITM event". I guess that must have been the East Africa Com conference in Nairobi back in April, which I attended myself and where I bumped into Thecla and other ITM market watchers. I always seem to miss the real intrigue at these get-togethers. While Thecla was getting useful inside info from Zain-ites, I was merely walking the halls trying to sell my wares.

In last week's chat with telecoms.com, Thecla also suggested "that perhaps the firm is struggling with the low margins on offer in many of its African markets."

Other analysts, according to the telecoms.com article, are divided. One unnamed source claimed that some kind of sale is "extremely probable" because "Zain is highly leveraged and financially constrained"; Angel Dobardziev of Ovum, meanwhile, told telecoms.com that any sale is unlikely because "Africa is very strategic to Zain" and "it doesn’t look like it needs to make the sale" because although "Zain does have a high level of debt... it also has a lot of cash and, if you look at current asset prices, this is not a great time for a seller."

The plot (if there is a plot) thickens. Or this is something we'll have all forgotten about in a few days' time. Take your pick.

Zain Africa Speculation Watch: Episode 2

Russia & CIS Com 2009: a good place to do business in the region

I'd like to pass on my good wishes to everyone working to deliver another great Russia & CIS Com conference and exhibition in Moscow this year. The 2009 iteration of this useful annual event takes place 2-3 June at the usual venue, the Radisson SaS Slavjanskaya Hotel.

It was my pleasure to produce the 2007 and 2008 versions of this event during my enjoyable stint with Informa Telecoms & Media so I will be interested to hear about how a new wrinkle in the design of the agenda works out.

We observed last year that while delegate numbers were strong on the first day, the crowd was noticeably thinner on the second day. We were keen to improve this situation in 2009 and beyond for the sponsors and exhibitors whose support makes the event possible. I think we worked out what was causing the problem.

With most of the events in the Com World Series, of which Russia & CIS Com is part, the conference gathers delegates from quite a large number of countries. The Moscow event, in contrast, tends to appeal mainly to telecoms sector executives from the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus only. Quite a high percentage of visitors come from the many telecoms businesses based in Moscow itself. Whereas out-of-town visitors to a conference tend to spend most of the two days of any event at the venue, those based in the venue city find it harder not to keep stepping out to keep on top of their day-to-day responsibilities. I think for a lot of the Muscovites in attendance, one day works out as a reasonable time commitment to the conference, but two days is a bit more of a stretch.

The device we dreamed up to resolve this was to split the agenda into two distinct chunks - each a conference within a conference, I suppose. So this year's Russia & CIS Com features one highly cellular-centric day of discussions and another which is focused more on wireline and fixed-wireless broadband, IPTV etc. Even in this age of accelerating convergence between fixed and mobile networks/services/technologies, we thought there is still a meaningful distinction between the "mobile crowd" and the "fixed crowd", at least for now. My hunch is that this will work well, delivering two somewhat overlapping crowds across the two days. I expect to hear that sponsors and exhibitors have gained from this and I daresay my former colleagues have briefed them on how to maximise the networking opportunity.

One returnee from the 2008 speaker panel is Konstantin Tikar, General Director of the Belarusian incumbent fixed-line operator, Beltelecom, whose mobile unit, CDMA operator Belcel has recently struck a revenue share deal with Velcom, the local subsidiary of mobilkom austria. According to a recent Total Telecom article, market-leading GSM operator Velcom will soon begin selling mobile broadband services in partnership with its rival Belcel. The article states that the 50/50 revenue-sharing agreement will see Velcom take control of Belcel's retail mobile broadband sales and customer service operation, while Belcel will manage and operate the infrastructure side of the business. Services will run on Belcel's EV-DO network, which currently supports data rates of up to 3.1 Mbps. With the country's GSM operators having yet to deploy W-CDMA networks of their own, this deal enables Velcom to get a 3G mobile broadband proposition to market ahead of rivals MTS Belarus and Turkcell-backed Life :) Belarus.

My guess is that Belcel will benefit greatly from having the much more successful Velcom handling the sales and customer service side of things. The CDMA operator's mobile market share has remained stuck at under 2% since the summer of 2006. Fifty percent of something significant has to be better than one hundred percent of not very much, I guess.

Mr Tikar is quoted in the Total Telecom story as saying "The cooperation [announced] today allows Belcel to increase the quality and capacity of its network significantly," while Velcom CEO Helmut Duhs observes that the agreement "provides our customers with a mature mobile broadband service and future-proof option to upgrade, once even more advanced technology becomes available in Belarus."

I'd like to congratulate my former colleagues on securing some strong speakers for Russia & CIS Com 2009. Among those joining Mr Tikar on stage at the conference will be:

• Gulnara Khasianova, General Director, SkyLink
• Donna Kordner, CEO, Tele2 Russia
• Michael Chobanyan, Managing Director, CDMA Ukraine
• Garrett Johnston, Group Director of Strategic Marketing, MTS
• Pavel Kuznetsov, CEO, Central Telegraph

If you aim to do business in that part of the world, I'd urge you to build a trip around a visit to the conference and exhibition.

Russia & CIS Com 2009: a good place to do business in the region

East Africa: exchange of views (?) on taxes levied on mobile use

When I used to be involved in the organisation of telecoms sector conferences and exhibitions around the world, my marketing team worked hard to ensure that the events were attended both by reporters from international industry publications and by journalists from the mainstream news media of the host country. It was always quite gratifying to see copy about the presentations and discussions in the local vernacular in the days following the conference.

I imagine, then, that my former colleagues in the Com World Series team over at Informa Telecoms & Media may have been a little annoyed to see a round up of stories clearly emanating from the recent East Africa Com conference in Nairobi which failed to mention the event. Perhaps the host country's Daily Nation newspaper is not actually at fault here, having sourced the piece from Reuters.

Putting these gripes aside, I was interested to see that of the numerous points raised at the event by Vitalis Olunga (who heads up the GSM Association's African chapter), the Reuter/Daily Nation article led with his comments about taxes on mobile phone use.

Mr. Olunga, whose day job is with market-leading Kenyan cellco Safaricom, is quoted as saying that excise duty rates of more than 10% across Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are too high. "If they reduce it, it will promote the usage of mobile. Rwanda has given us a good example where they introduced it at 3%," he told Reuters at a regional telecoms conference (this is the point at which the journos could have named the conference!)

Olungu said that a cut would also help cushion the sector from forecast falls in ARPU as the region increasingly feels the impact of the global financial crisis.

Susan Mochache, also spoke at the event, is an assistant director at the Communications Commission of Kenya. Ms. Mochache told Reuters her organisation expected tariffs to fall anyway due to growing competition.

I flew to Nairobi with the beginnings of a bad head cold. I got off the plane with somewhat impaired hearing as a result. So I may have missed some nuances of what was discussed at the conference. Even so, I am pretty sure that the exhange of views about taxes and tariffs which is implied in the Reuters/Daily Nation piece is not something that unfolded on stage...

East Africa: exchange of views (?) on taxes levied on mobile use

East Africa Com report: Telkom Kenya positions as only convergence player in a competitive mobile market

TELKOM KENYA: ambitions of being East Africa's only quad-player

Last week I spent two days nipping in and out of the Com World Series East Africa Com conference and exhibition, organised by Informa Telecoms & Media in Nairobi, Kenya. I had hoped to share some of what was discussed here in real-time, blogging merrily away from the conference venue. A busy schedule made this difficult, compounded by the non-availability of a genuinely fast and reliable Internet connection at either the venue or my hotel.

Broadband speed and price in the region was a topic visited by a number of the conference speakers. Peter Reinartz, the Deputy CEO of Telkom Kenya/Orange Kenya, for instance, spoke about the effects of the long-anticipated arrival of submarine fibre optic cable. Reinartz poured cold water on suggestions that the retail price of broadband services would fall by as much as 90%, but did pick out the region's improved connections to the rest of the world as being a key driver of the kind of converged offerings his company is putting together.

Telkom Kenya was privatised in 2007, with France Telecom acquiring a 51% stake. The Kenya Government retains the other 49%. As part of the process, the company's controlling stake in market-leading cellco Safaricom was transferred to the Government, temporarily taking Telkom Kenya out of the GSM game. This brief period away from the heat of the battle in the mobile space ended with the September 2008 launch of Orange Kenya. With the later arrival of Essar-managed Econet Wireless Kenya (branded Yu), the country's mobile market is now home to four competing providers: Zain also has a presence.

As of March 2009, according to the World Cellular Information Service, the Kenyan mobile market is split as follows:

1. Safaricom: 76.79%
2. Zain Kenya: 17.41%
3. Telkom Kenya/Orange: 3.90%
4. Yu: 1.89%

The fourth player in the list above has recently been the subject of takeover speculation. On the day the conference opened, South African news portal Business Report was carrying denials from Yu CEO Srinivasa Iyengar regarding plans to sell the operation to MTN. If such a transaction were ever to take place, the Kenyan market would become the scene of a competitive struggle between only well-funded regional giants.

In his presentation, Reinartz spoke about not wanting to be Kenya's "third mobile operator", preferring to position the company as the country's only converged operator. 2009, he said, is to be a crucial year in the development of this strategy. Having launched a unified brand, a single touchpoint for customers and having "built an image as a full alternative to [the] mobile incumbents" in 2008, Reinartz set out his stall for this year: reinforcing existing customer retention initiatives and rolling out the first layer of convergent propositions. One of these is voice pricing unification across Telkom PSTN, Orange 'Fixed Plus' (CDMA WLL) and Orange mobile services. Customers can enjoy friends-and-family discounts across all these services.

At the conference, Zain was represented by Raed Haddadin, the group's Commercial Director for East Africa. A theme about which Mr. Haddadin spoke enthusiastically was mobile money. In this space, the Zain offering, branded Zap, enables under-banked people to desposit and withdraw cash, transfer funds to family and friends, top up mobile airtime and pay bills for goods and services.

Other tasks prevent me from rambling on at length now about other information I gleaned at the conference. I'll try to share more in the coming days.

East Africa Com report: Telkom Kenya positions as only convergence player in a competitive mobile market

See you in Nairobi?

Next week I am going to spend a few days in Nairobi, Kenya, where I will be attending East Africa Com, the region's telco sector conference and exhibition organised by Informa Telecoms & Media. The event takes place April 1-2 at the Safari Park Hotel, with highlight including presentations from:

• Raed Haddidin, Commercial Director, East Africa Region, Zain Group
• Michael Joseph, CEO, Safaricom, Kenya
• Peter Reinartz, Deputy-CEO, Orange/Telkom Kenya
• Mohammed Bouhelal, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Canar Telecom, Sudan
• Noel Herrity, Director General, Zantel, Tanzania
• Shiletsi Makhofane, Acting Chief Executive Officer, Africa Online
• Deng Malok, Managing Director, Bilpam Telecommunications, Sudan
• Charles J.K. Njoroge, Director-General, Communications Commission of Kenya
• Joe Kimani, CEO, Flashcom, Kenya

Anyone based in East Africa or wanting to do business there will find this event a useful place to put faces to names, do some networking and get a sense of what's happening in the region. If you do plan to be there and have not already booked accommodation, you will find that the conference venue itself is fully booked. The Windsor Golf Hotel and Country Club seems to be nearby and of a comparable standard. Anyone who ends up there is welcome to look me up for a chat over breakfast and to share a taxi to East Africa Com conference. Anyone who reads this, plans to be in Nairobi next week and wishes to compare notes on the telecoms sector in emerging markets can drop me a line at developingtelecoms@yahoo.com. While I will have a full schedule of meetings related to my day job, I do plan to write about the conference sessions and any announcements made at the event. I'll try to make it look pretty by adding some photos. Watch this space...

See you in Nairobi?

Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali and Senegal stand out among West and Central Africa's booming mobile markets

An article from the African Press Agency this week, picked up by Cellular News, has rounded up a very positive set of Q3 2008 operational results from telcos doing business in West and Central Africa, including MTN, Orange, Zain, and Millicom Cellular International.

The mobile markets of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Gabon and Mali, according to the unnamed authors of a report to which the article refers, are found to be larger than expected. Conversely, the mobile markets of Cameroon, Mauritania and Senegal were found to be smaller than expected by the end of 2008.

This report apparently included a five-year mobile telephony forecast for West and Central Africa which forsees the strongest subscriber growth occurring in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali and Senegal. The report adds that in Cameroon and Mali, penetration rates were still relatively low at the end of 2008, giving these markets considerable room for further future growth. The report authors are correct. According to the World Cellular Information Service offered by Informa Telecoms & Media, mobile penetration in Cameroon stood at just over 31% by the end of December 2008 and at just over 28.5% in Mali.

These are the sort of numbers I expected. Much more surprising is the 103.66% penetration recorded in Gabon - and the fact that the Gabonese market has doubled in size over the last two years. True, the relatively small country with a small population (around 1.5 million) has abundant natural resources and has apparently enjoyed decent levels of foreign private investment, all of which has made Gabon one of the more prosperous countries in the region, with the highest Human Development Index in Sub-Saharan Africa. Mobile penetration of over 100% still seems unusually impressive, even in this context. In the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa only South Africa and Botswana have broken the 100% barrier.

This article, then, indicates that West and Central Africa's mobile markets are in rude health. It is certainly the case that the Com World Series conference and exhibition which serves this region was one of Informa Telecom's & Media's more impressive success stories in 2008, with delegate numbers up 72% vs. the previous year's event. I do not believe that all of this growth can be attributed to shifting the conference to Abuja, capital of the continent's largest market, Nigeria. My former colleague, Julie Rey has done a magificent job growing this and other events in Africa in her time with the business.

One of the CEOs who contributed to the 2007 version of the event (in Dakar, Senegal) has been in the news this week, for rather less happy reasons than some new achievement on the part of the cellco which he leads.

Aimable Mpore heads up MTN's operation in C­ôte D'Ivoire, a country from which he has just been expelled according to a Cellular News article I read this week. Mr Mpore (who has dual Canadian and Rwandan citizenship) has apparently managed to embarrass the country's President.

One of the frustrations of doing the same job as Julie in other world regions was having to handle cancellations on the part of keenly-anticipated conference speakers. My view is that everyone who agrees to make a presentation or join a roundtable discussion does so in good faith, genuinely intending to be there as advertised. I therefore realise that it makes sense to take it on the chin when some legitimate cause for withdrawing crops up. I am not sure if Mr Mpore was planning to make it to Abuja for this years's West & Central Africa Com. Unless his current difficulties are resolved soon, I would say he has a legitimate reason to decline the invitation or go back on any arrangement already made.

As I look back fondly on my years of rounding speakers for industry conferences worldwide, this is one aspect of the job I will not miss.

Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali and Senegal stand out among West and Central Africa's booming mobile markets

Delays notwithstanding, 3G to outpace WiMAX in India

On Friday I spotted an article in the Economic Times which quoted a familiar name: Kunal Bajaj, the India MD of BDA, a consultancy business which originated as an advisory firm specializing in China's telecommunications, media and technology sector. Kunal was a very useful contributor to one of the first Com World Series events it was my pleasure to host while working with Informa Telecoms & Media - the COAI-endorsed GSM>3G India 2007 conference and exhibition in Mumbai.

This event, now known as India & South Asia Com was, in those days, a useful place for telecoms tech vendors to mingle with a large, senior and diverse crowd drawn from India's numerous mobile operators. The event has since become rather more than that, having grown simultaneously in two directions.

One of these directions, in common with all the equivalent Com World Series shows in other regions, is about extending the appeal of the conference beyond the cellular sector and into the wider telecoms world. At any Com World Series event now, you can expect to meet representatives of a very broad range of telcos: MNOs, incumbent and challenger wireline operators, cable MSOs and all kinds of broadband service providers. While it is true that the mix varies depending on the relative value of each of these segments in the part of the world concerned, I am ending my involvement in the Series with a sense that the team are doing an ever better job of providing the exhibitors and sponsors (largely tech vendors: network equipment, OSS/BSS etc.) with high-value one-stop-shops of potential customers from across huge regions. The tricky part is ensuring that the conference element is genuinely useful for the telcos' delegates, i.e. providing them with meaningful peer networking opportunities and insightful presentation material from genuinely influential speakers. I believe the Com World Series team pull off this trick remarkably well.

In the case of the Mumbai event, the other change which I was responsible for driving was to do with marketing the conference to delegates from India's neighbours across the rest of South Asia, namely the Maldives, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Securing speakers and delegates from the last of these is not without challenges. One scarcely needs to be an especially diligent student of South Asian affairs to be aware of the tensions between Pakistan and India, two countries which have gone to war with each other three times since the partition of India in 1947. In terms of how these tensions have affected my work in that part of the world, I remember our team assisting the then-CEO of Pakistan's Ufone GSM, Mubashir Naqvi, whose participation we had secured as one of the key speakers. It was clear that the paperwork and delays around arranging a visit to India were rather more arduous for Pakistanis than for citizens of any other country. Along the way, I also realised that roaming agreements did not exist between mobile operators in the two countries, meaning that Pakistani visitors to the Mumbai conference would need to go to some trouble in order to keep in touch with colleagues and families back home.

These difficulties notwithstanding, I am convinced that Pakistani delegates can be attracted to the India & South Asia Com World Series event, even in the context of tensions raised yet higher by the November terrorist attacks on Mumbai. I noted in my end-of-year post on my former Com World Series blog that the timing of this terrible incident made a postponement of the India & South Asia Com 2009 unavoidable. The event was set to go ahead in January, and is now rescheduled for mid-May.

The main reason for my feeling sure that the Mumbai conference can successfully gather participants from all over South Asia is what I learned when I travelled to Bangladesh in July 2007 with the specific intention of gauging the appetite for a whole-region event. My trip to Dhaka took in a meeting of the South Asian GSM Forum and a conference which Informa Telecoms & Media ran in conjunction with Singapore-based colleagues at sister company IBC Asia. Dubbed Mobile South Asia, this event had previously been held in Sri Lanka and Pakistan as well as Bangladesh. The 2007 iteration, which I attended, seemed to be well-received by delegates from the operators, but it did prove rather harder to persuade sponsors that any of these venues would work well. That was part of why it seemed attractive for us to merge the Dhaka event into the Mumbai conference in 2008 and beyond. The Mumbai audience, when polled on site, were actively supportive of the move, but I travelled to Bangladesh less sure of whether the Mobile South Asia crowd would welcome being bundled together with their Indian colleagues. Again, I conducted a poll on site and came away feeling sure that the combined event would be successful. I would like to think that in my new role I will be able to attend this gathering, if not this year then at least in the not-too-distant future. I expect to see it evolving positively.

The article in which Kunal Bajaj's name cropped up concerns the idea that India's telecoms operators are worried that the further delay of 3G and WiMAX auctions (which I was writing about here on Friday) will significantly dampen the development of services. Kunal and his colleagues at BDA seem to be more optimistic. A report which they have prepared, in conjunction with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), predicts that by 2011, 25% of 3G revenues will come from non-voice services, a half of which will be data access. Kunal Bajaj says "while this seems like a modest estimate, it is to be noted that data comprises less than 1% of present 2G revenues."

I suppose BDA's estimate only appears modest to those who did not adjust their expectations down to realistic levels in the wake of relatively lacklustre 3G debuts in markets around the world. I remember a very good article written in 2006 by Neil Montefiore, who recently stood down as CEO of Singaporean cellco M1 after a stint of nearly thirteen years at the helm. Writing for the Informa Telecoms & Media Global Mobile fortnightly research service, Montefiore argued that "the basic problem with all technology lies in its marketing." He observed that "clever stuff is developed and launched and sometimes catches the imagination of the masses without too much effort from the marketing experts," and that "it's when the clever stuff gets complicated that the marketing becomes the catalyst for success, or the point of failure." Montefiore argued that when compared to products such as the iPod, SMS or mobile voice, "3G is a complex proposition... [requiring] new technology and new handsets [and enabling] the mobilization of familiar experiences." Montefiore noted that most operators had targeted 3G launches at the mass market, "focusing on expensive, high-profile content downloads and mobile TV", had spent significant sums on mass-media advertising, and had offered "huge voice-tariff incentives for people to switch to 3G." He observed that handset makers had launched wide "ranges of cheaper handsets in an effort to fire up the market, losing sight of the fact that the success of 3G is based on the sale of the service itself." This last point is surely familiar territory for us all. How many of us are currently using anything like the full range of functionalities offered by the mobile devices in our pockets? Perhaps it's even more pertinent to ask about the handsets in the pockets of our friends and family members who do not earn a living in the mobile sector.

Writing in 2006, Montefiore argued that "the results have been mixed, the adoption rate is slow and there is no mass-market take-up... because the mass market believes the hype and assumes the service will be as good as the advertising says it is." He insisted that "when the experience doesn't live up to the expectation, the momentum quickly dissipates" and that "ultimately, the marketers are trying to sell the service to the wrong people."

Montefiore argued that "as an industry, we need to relaunch 3G. We need to communicate specifically with early adopters and develop targeted marketing propositions to cater to their expectations. That means thinking outside the box in terms of media, looking at ways of reaching our target markets in a structured rather than scatter gun approach. It means treating 3G as a niche market with identifiable and quantifiable applications that have a value and purpose. We need to turn our perception of 3G on its head, stop treating it as the cure-all for falling ARPU by assuming that every user out there actually wants streaming video, and revert to proper, old-fashioned marketing by building a proper business case for its adoption."

My feeling is that these lessons have been learned in the two-and-a-half years since Neil Montefiore levelled his criticisms at operators and handset vendors. We are, finally, living in a mobile data market showing clear signs of explosive growth after years of slower progress. The Informa Telecoms & Media report, Mobile Networks Forecasts: Future Mobile Traffic, Base Stations and Revenues (published June 2008), quotes network vendor Ericsson as stating "that on the W-CDMA networks it has deployed worldwide, total data traffic overtook total voice traffic in May 2007" and that "by December 2007 total data traffic was 3.7 times the level of voice traffic."

In his article, Neil Montefiore argued that "the way to build a market for a new technology is surely to focus on the people who understand the way that technology evolves, who are excited by its potential and who are forgiving of its teething problems." He said that computing, Internet services, DVD, VCR, MP3 "all started as expensive, complicated, sometimes unreliable technologies, but the mass markets they enjoy today have been built on the belief and understanding of those early adopters who disregarded the hype and focused on the capabilities."

To me, drawing on my daily experiences of living in the UK, it seems intuitive to believe that the remarkable growth in data traffic reported by Ericsson has been driven more by tech-savvy/time poor business users of HSPA dongles than by trendy consumers playing with funky phones. Beyond people working in the industry, I still seem to know very few people with 3G handsets and even fewer who are using them to do anything very bandwidth-hungry. However, for MNOs looking for a return on their 3G network investments, we possibly should not suppose that the mobile phone form factor and consumer services will always contribute less than dongles and corporate data subscriptions. The Informa Telecoms & Media Non-SMS Data report (published June 2008) notes that even the 2G version of the iPhone has significantly boosted the take-up of mobile Internet browsing, citing the case of T-Mobile's German operation, which announced in 1Q08 that average mobile data consumption, mostly for mobile Internet browsing, was up to 30 times more than for users of other handsets. Maybe a disruptive player shaking up the devices market is one of the more significant factors moving us towards the tipping point for mass-market mobile data use.

Devices also get a mention in the Economic Times article in which we saw Kunal Bajaj being relatively bullish about mobile data in India. The article flags up doubts about the practicality of 3G arising from "the unaffordability of 3G-enabled devices in the market and the costs involved in setting up a 3G network." In the same piece, these concerns are swiftly dashed by COAI supremo T.V. Ramachandran: "Even though most 3G enabled phones in India today are priced above Rs.8000, LG has launched a $100 phone which is enabled for 3G services but does not have any multimedia capabilities. These will flood the Indian market for 3G voice services [once the spectrum auctions are concluded]." Ramachandran continues: "nearly all of the existing telecom networks, which have been set up in the past two years, are 3G enabled."

According to the article, Kunal Bajaj estimates it will take only six months to deal with the need to build the additional capacity building to run commercial 3G services on these networks.

The thrust of the Economic Times article is that the prospects for 3G in India are rather better than for WiMAX, hence the title of my blog entry. Remember that the spectrum issues which have delayed the onset of the 3G era in India have also affected those seeking to deploy WiMAX, so I would not expect to see a situation similar to the one I've heard described in the Russian Federation. There, the three leading mobile operators (MTS, Vimplecom and MegaFon) have rolled out 3G services in major cities but not in the nation's capital. As recently as December 12th, Global Mobile Daily was reporting that the rollout of commercial 3G services in Moscow faces further delay because the Russian military has not yet freed up UMTS frequencies. I have heard the argument that this frustrating 3G launch delay in the country's most lucrative market has created a window of opportunity for broadband providers offering WiMAX-enabled services and has been the catalyst for some fairly enthusiastic hyping of the prospects for WiMAX in Russia.

Not only will prospective Indian WiMAX deployers not gain from any significant first-mover advantage, Friday's Economic Times article also makes the case for how 3G enjoys two advantages over the rival access technology, one of which is probably true worldwide, the other of which has to do with the specifics of the Indian market.

The first of these points in favour of 3G is that "there is no such truly affordable counterpart [of the above-mentioned low-cost 3G phones] available for accessing WiMAX." The second concerns market maturity. "National penetration of mobile telephony," the article states, "is expected to cross 50% through 3G in 2011, thrice as fast as it would with 2G, as the capacity of a 3G network is thrice more than that of a 2G equivalent." The argument goes that whereas in developed countries 3G was developed only when 2G penetration was saturated and telcos wanted to grow their revenues through more value added services (VAS), the case is very different in India. Says Kunal Bajaj: "In India, we are already on a 2.5G platform in terms of technology; but our services are still poorly developed owing to spectrum constraints. In this context, 3G will definitely mean better voice services and data access for the first time in many segments, rather than increase in other VAS."

This is not to suggest there is no business case for WiMAX in India. I think I understand from the Economic Times article that Government policy has a place for WiMAX, favouring the technology as a provider of data access, particularly for last mile connectivity in rural areas. Additionally, the BDA report says that "WiMAX is expected to be used for fixed residential and enterprise broadband access in cities."

This all makes it sound as if there is a reasonable case for WiMAX and a stronger one for 3G in India. Let's see.

Delays notwithstanding, 3G to outpace WiMAX in India

GSM vs. CDMA: the battle goes on?

One of the most rewarding aspects of being part of Informa Telecoms & Media's Com World Series team was having the opportunity to learn about regions which I had not previously studied or visited. Previously, while creating and hosting telecoms sector conferences for other companies, my travels had taken me to North America, Central & Eastern Europe and to Russia. My Com World Series brief took me further afield. In addition to already familiar territory, regions I covered in the Informa role included the Middle East , India/South Asia and Latin America.

In the last of these regions, my visits began at what felt like the relatively advanced stages of a protracted cellular network standard battle between the GSM and CDMA camps. A key partner in the delivery of the GSM Americas/Americas Com events in which I was involved was 3G Americas, an association founded in 2002, with a mission to unite "mobile operators and manufacturers in the Americas to provide a single voice to represent the GSM family of wireless technologies – GSM, GPRS, EDGE, and UMTS/HSDPA."

The 3G Americas President, Chris Pearson and the association's Latin America Director Erasmo Rojas led an Executive Briefing session at each of the Americas Com conferences delivered under my watch. They did a great job of rounding up CxO-level participants from key South American MNOs. I don't think they would mind me saying that on both occassions Chris's opening presentation really banged the drum for the GSM family in terms of describing advantages over rival standards.

I cannot be sure to what extent 3G Americas has been instrumental to the Western Hemisphere's migration away from CDMA technology in favour of the GSM flavour, but that migration has been significant. The graphic below, taken from the 3G Americas website (and drawn from Informa Telecoms & Media WCIS figures), shows how GSM has prevailed in the opening years of this new century:

It is worth pointing out that the non-GSM subscriptions are now, for the most part, in North America. In the USA and Canada, it is estimated that there currently exist around 153 million CDMA connections. GSM subscriptions across these two markets number around 104 million and W-CDMA lines have just reached the 20 million mark.

Looking further south, Informa Telecoms & Media estimated that in the 'Americas' region (all markets in the Western Hemisphere except the USA and Canada), there were almost 400 million GSM subscriptions and just 40.6 million CDMA subscriptions by the end of December 2008. Of these CDMA lines, the two most significant chunks were the 11.7 million connections in Brazil and the 15.8 million in Venezuela. In the case of Brazil, a single operator, Vivo, accounts for all the CDMA subscriptions.

When I looked up these figures today, I was a little surprised that Vivo, a joint Telefónica-Portugal Telecom operation, still has so many subscribers on its CDMA network. The last time I was looking closely at developments at Vivo, which was back in about May 2008, I was under the impression the company planned to shift all of its CDMA mobile subscribers to its newer GSM network. That process is certainly happening - but at nothing like the speed I imagined.

In Venezuela, the vast majority of the CDMA connections are owned by renationalised Movilnet, which has an estimated 11.3 million subscribers - vs. the 4.5 million CDMA connections of rival Movistar. Unlike Movilnet, the Telefónica-backed Venezuelan MNO has been steadily shifting users to a GSM network since March 2006. However, the state-owned cellco is also, finally, making the move to GSM. In December last year, Global Mobile Daily reported that billing vendor Amdocs has deployed a billing solution to support Movilnet's new GSM network.

We can therefore expect continuing developments in Latin America to impact upon the next version of the above graphic. Look out for further erosion in the non-GSM networks' share of Western Hemisphere mobile subscriptions.

One might infer from all of this that CDMA is a technology in quick decline towards an inevitable demise. However, recent news items from India lead me to believe that the GSM-CDMA battle is very much a live one in that country.

Earlier this week, I spotted that Sistema Shyam TeleServices is potentially looking at more acquisitions in order to gain better access to the Indian market. The company, a joint venture between majority shareholder Sistema of Russia and India's Shyam Group, was among operators to get new licences in early 2008. The nascent cellco is aiming to offer CDMA-based mobile services across the country before the middle of 2010. A Business Line/Hindu Group article dated Jan 30th quotes Vsevolod Rozanov, President and CEO, Sistema Shyam TeleServices, who says "We are open to any opportunities for acquiring a mobile services company in India to speed up our roll out plans. However, there are not too many CDMA operators in the country who are looking to sell their business." Asked specifically about well-established CDMA MNO Reliance Communications, Rozanov said, "Yes we can look at Reliance’s business if they are willing to sell. However, I do not think that is the case." According to the article Reliance was, at some unspecified recent time "considering a merger deal with South Africa-based telecom player MTN."

When the full gravity of the global economic downturn started to become clear to us all last year, I sensed that one casualty might be the international expansion plans of Russia's leading telecoms groups. In that context, Sistema's apparent willingness to spend money on growing its Indian CDMA operation suggests to me not only confidence in the Indian market but also a belief that the CDMA standard is up to the task of supporting attractive, well-priced and future-proof services.

Another sign that CDMA is to be taken seriously in India is the recent, strongly worded response of the COAI (Cellular Operators' Association of India) to reported plans on the part of one operator to make EV-DO data cards available on the market. The COAI is a club of GSM operators, a group that must surely be frustrated by the ongoing delays in the licensing of spectrum for 3G and WiMAX services. Telecoms.com reported today that having already put the spectrum auctions off until this year, because of the government's failure to clear the relevant radio spectrum in all operating regions ('circles' in the local jargon), new delays are anticipated in the wake of proposals to double the base price of the licences.

India's GSM players, then, are clearly concerned about being outpaced by CDMA operators. An article in yesterday's Economic Times says that COAI Director General T.V. Ramachandran has written to the country's telecoms Minister to seek assurances that no private player should be allowed to launch EV-DO service without 3G being made available to all players. The article states that according to the COAI, the launch of EV-DO services would be unfair to the GSM operators as "CDMA operators have ample spectrum to offer both 2G as well as 3G services and this can result in [giving] unfair anti-competitive advantage to CDMA and tilt the playing field to the disadvantage of the private GSM operators".

I daresay Mr Ramachandran and his colleagues will make a strong and persuasive case. During my stint running the Com World Series Indian event I had the pleasure of meeting the COAI Director General several times. One memory stands out. In 2007 I was asked to have lunch with Mr Ramachandran and his guests from various Indian government agencies at the conference. One of the guests, on agreeing with a point made by the COAI head, gave me a useful piece of advice about keeping tabs on telco sector developments in India. "If you want to know," said my neighbour at the lunch table, "watch T.V." I will indeed keep an eye out for more on this story. I am interested to see if the COAI can indeed prevail in their argument that EV-DO gives CDMA operators an unfair advantage over GSM operators struggling with further delays to their own 3G plans.

All of this makes me look back and smile at a very simplistic remark made to me years ago by one of my first bosses at a telecoms sector conference company. It was one of his tasks to set me on the path of cutting through the then-forbidding tangle of telco jargon. "CDMA is dead," he told me. "You only need to worry about GSM". I don't think that can have been true then given that it's abundantly clear that it's not correct even now.

GSM vs. CDMA: the battle goes on?

Meet the new blog, same as the old blog

I am coming to the end of enjoyable time working for Informa Telecoms & Media, the leading provider of business intelligence to global telecoms and media markets. From the company's 100+ analysts, researchers and journalists, I am saying farewell to a number of close colleagues and good friends with whom it has been an absolute pleasure to work.

My role with the company has been to oversee the development of parts of the Com World Series, a suite of emerging markets-focused telecoms sectors conference/exhibition events. In my time with the company, I got to work on events covering Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the CIS (including the Central Asian republics), India and South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. While doing all of this, I have enthusiastically embraced elements of the team's web 2.0 strategy, implementing the the first Com World Series branded LinkedIn groups and writing the Com World Series blog. As my time with Informa draws to a close, I have relucantly handed the blog to colleagues and I look forward to seeing it develop in their hands.

I am not yet clear if in my new role it will be appropriate to maintain a blog of the same type - news, views and commentary on the telecoms sector in emerging markets. For now, then, I will continue to write here in a purely independent capacity. I enjoy blogging and find that the (almost) daily exercise of having something to write keeps me on my toes in terms of watching interesting developments worldwide. I hope some of what I write here provides useful food for thought for anyone doing business in these regions.

Meet the new blog, same as the old blog