Millicom's withdrawal from Asia to prompt (much-needed?) market consolidations?

Russia's Beeline brand comes to Cambodia - and set to drive consolidation in the wake of Millicom's withdrawl? Picture (C) Roger Barlow.

Millicom International Cellular, the Luxembourg-based company which provides cellular telephony services to more than 30 million customers in across Latin America, Africa and Asia recently announced that its assets in the latter of these three regions are up for sale. The company's announcement mentioned that during Q1 2009, these Asian operations and joint ventures generated UDS 68 million in revenues and USD 4 million net profit for the group.

Even more recently - on Tuesday last week - the company announced its 2Q 2009 results, encouraging highlights of which were:

• mobile subscribers up 25% vs. 2Q 2008 - bringing total subscribers up to 30.8 million
• reported revenues up 5% to USD 814 million (2Q 2008: USD 774 million)
• EBIDTA up 14% to USD 371 million (2Q 2008: USD 326 million) - this beat the USD 361 million forecast in a Reuters poll of twelve analysts
• EBIDTA margin of 45.6% (+340 basis points vs. 2Q 2008)
  

These results excluded "discontinued operations" - this means Tigo Sierra Leone and the three Asian operators. This, then, certainly leaves little doubt that the group is committed to its exit from Asia. The three Asian operations concerned are in Cambodia, Laos and Sri Lanka.

Why is Millicom looking to get out of these markets? Zacks Investment Research offers the following explanation: "The major concerns in these markets for Millicom are increased competition and an extremely tight credit market." According to Zacks, the Asian region contributed just 8% of the company’s total revenue and its EBITDA contribution was even lower at 6% of the total. The Zacks commentary also notes that overall ARPU in Asia was just USD 6.2 in the first quarter of 2009, compared to USD 6.6 in the previous quarter and "a massive" USD 8.7 in 1Q 2008.

According to Millicom CEO Mikael Grahne, increased competition certainly does seem to have affected the profitability of Cellcard, the Cambodian cellco in which Millicom has a 58.4% stake. Steve Finch, writing on Friday in the Phnom Penh Post, observed that Millicom's Grahne appears very critical of the "disruptive market-entry strategies" of new entrants into Cambodia's increasingly crowded mobile sector. On the other hand, Finch also observes that another major shareholder in Cellcard does not agree with Millicom's assertion that this is negatively impacting profitability: "[There are] no concerns on profitability from our side," said Mark Hanna, CFO of Royal Group, which owns a 38.5% stake in the cellco, denying that margins had become tighter. As well as investments in property development and the media sector, Royal Group is very active in Cambodia's telecoms sector. In addition to its stake in Cellcard, the group has shares in Royal Telecam International (the second licenced international gateway in the Kingdom; also a joint venture with Millicom) and teleSurf, a broadband service provider.

Whichever side of this argument is the more valid, it seems undeniable to me that Cambodia is currently supporting an incredibly large number of cellcos. Millicom-backed Cellcard, which is by some margin the market leader (43.65% of subs according to WCIS) is one of three well-established players, the others being Hello (an Axiata company with 13.28% of subs) and Mfone (19.84% of subs). From 2007 onwards, a number of further entrants have piled into the market. The most recent of these is Beeline Cambodia, owned by Vimpelcom, one of Russia's big three cellcos. The arrival of this new operator, whose services were launched very recently and whose subs are not yet recorded by WCIS, brings the grand total to nine MNOs vying for business in a country of just 14.2 million people.

To me, this feels like a vastly excessive number, particularly in light of the fact that mobile market consolidation has been a recurrent theme here at DevelopingTelecomsWatch this year - we've discussed whether even a relatively large African market such as Tanzania can possibly sustain the numbers of licensed mobile operators currently competing there - and have asked the same question about much smaller markets such as Burundi and Gabon. Moreover, we have discussed this issue in broader terms, i.e. whether/when we should expect a wave of market consolidations across Africa, prompted to do so by the stated belief of MTN CEO Phuthuma Nhleko that this is set to happen.

Mobile penetration in Cambodia currently stands at 34.41%, according to WCIS. So there is room for growth. How many of this large number of cellcos, though, will be equipped to take full advantage of that opportunity? I suppose that will partly depend on their resources and the quality of their management teams - but even very solid companies could struggle if there is any truth in the Millicom allegation about the effects of new players' disruptive market entry strategies. As Steve Finch of the Phnom Penh Post explained, these strategies involve the distribution of free SIM cards and airtime - very nice for quickly building a subscriber base, but taken to its logical conclusion this can seriously erode overall market value for all players.

Has this kind of strategy worked for any of the new players in terms of rapidly building market share? The answer seems to be a resounding 'yes' in the case of one particular new entrant, Metfone, which is the Cambodian subsidiary of Vietnamese MNO Viettel. According to WCIS, Metfone has quickly carved out an incredible 17.47% of the market since its launch late last year. The current WCIS estimate for Metfone subsriber numbers is 900,000. There may be precedents elsewhere in the world for an operator arriving in an already fragmented market and amassing subscribers at something like that rate - but none spring immediately to mind for me.

How is Viettel able to do this? The answer might be that the company is simply not working to the same commercial logic as its rivals in the Cambodian mobile market. Viettel itself is owned by the army of Vietnam, a state officially committed to the creed of socialism and where all organs of government are controlled by the country's Communist Party. In a March essay here on the global links between the telecoms organisations of countries with left-leaning regimes, Metfone got a mention. That piece referenced a Saigon Times article on Viettel's foray into neighbouring Cambodia, which indicated that the new cellco would target low-income subscribers with a wide range of low-priced services and packages. Viettel Deputy General Director Nguyen Manh Hung was quoted as saying that this approach is not only about customer acquisition but is also intended to "contribute to society". Perhaps we should take that to imply a quite different interpretation of the for-profit motive than the one most of us in market economies have to live with in our jobs and lives.

Have any of Metfone's fellow recent market entrants been able to build a subscriber base at anything like the same speed? There answer here appears to be a resounding 'no'.

In terms of market share and subs, the other newcomers have fared as follows:

• Star-Cell (GSM) - 3.27%, 168,400 subs; part of the TeliaSonera group; commercial launch in 2007
• qb (W-CDMA) - 1.20%, 62,000 subs; commercial launch in 2008
• Latelz (GSM) -0.97% 50,000 subs; launched in 2009; owned by Time Turns Telecom, which is also an investor in telecoms operators in Burundi, Tanzania, Nepal and Sierra Leone
• Excell (CDMA) - 0.31%, 16,000 subs; launched in 2009
  

In September last year, Morten Eriksen, the CEO of the second operator in the above list was interviewed by AsiaLife Guide Phnom Penh, a monthly lifestyle magazine for expatriates living in Cambodia. Eriksen, who also explained that qb is funded by international venture capitalists and local Cambodian partners, expressed the belief that there is a good opportunity created by the country's very limited fixed line telecom infrastructure and the eagerness of its people of "to experience new technologies." He also asserted that rather than focusing on competing, the company is focusing on the people of Cambodia and how it can provide the best benefit to them. Specifically, Eriksen expressed his company's commitment to serving the youth segment with "packages and services to help students in the pursuit of education as they are Cambodia’s future." In an earlier interview - with the Bangkok Post in June 2008 - Eriksen reported that when he was first invited to get involved a 3G project in Cambodia, his initial reaction was that "they must be crazy". He explained that only after reluctantly travelling to Cambodia did he see the potential in a market with three incumbents providing bad, expensive service and where a 256Kbps ADSL line cost over USD 600 a month. The article indicates that the project formally started in 2004, with the company getting a licence in 2006 and then signing a turnkey network agreement with Ericsson in June 2007. Groundwork started in October 2007 and the first test call was made a month later. Finally on March 15 2008, qb was launched "with over 57,000 subscribers signing up on launch day courtesy of a huge concert and free SIM packages."

If that figure of 57,000 initial subs is accurate (and WCIS does reflect this), then further growth has certainly been very slow indeed.

Of the late entrant mobile operators, it would seem, then, that only Viettel's Metfone operation has really made a major impact on the Cambodian market.

So, if Millicom, as market leader, is going to withdraw from this market, which telecoms groups have looked at this seemingly very challenging competitive environment and expressed an interest in acquiring Cellcard? Two names which have surfaced in recent weeks are ones already competing in Cambodia. Consolidation, then, would appear to be on the cards already, even ahead of any of the smaller players potentially having to withdraw.

The first interested party, according to a TeleGeography article earlier this month, is Axiata, the Malaysian-owned mobile group formerly known as TM International. Axiata is said to be considering offering a total of USD 700 million for both Cellcard of Cambodia and Millicom's Sri Lankan operation. Were this bid to be made and accepted, Sri Lanka would also see market consolidation - Axiata owns the island's market-leading cellco Dialog Telekom. According to the TeleGeography article, Axiata has declined to confirm or deny the talks, but said "in-country consolidation is of strategic importance in some of our markets." This does seem to be something of a trend in Asia - and for Axiata - of late. Cellular News reported last month that Aktel, the Axiata/NTT DoCoMo joint venture in Bangladesh is rumoured to be in merger talks with rival Banglalink, which is owned by Egypt's Orascom Telecom. Banglalink CEO Ahmed Abou Doma explained in a statement that apart from the market leader (Grameenphone), "others are continually posting losses" and that "in order to sustain in this fiercely competitive market, and in line with [Orascom's] growth ambitions", his company is "considering many strategies of which consolidation is an option."

In Cambodia, the other potential bidder for Millicom's Cellcard operation seems to be Russia's Vimpelcom. Again, this is another existing competitor, albeit one whose Cambodian launch was very recent. According to a Reuters report earlier this month, Vimpelcom spokeswoman Yelena Prokrova was conceded that potentially the Asian assets of Millicom could be interesting for for the Russian telco because they are located in the region which the company views as strategic in its international expansion. The report notes that Vimpelcom would also be interested in Millicom's operation in Laos.

My sense is that, as we have seen here, Cambodia is one of a number of Asian markets in which mobile sector consolidation seems very likely. I am wary of the notion that low penetration rates alone mean that any given emerging market or developing country offers telecoms groups a licence to print easy money. The low ARPU inherent in serving relatively poor people and the challenges of rolling out infrastructure to under-developed regions, often in challenging physical environments, can make for unattractively thin margins. If destructive levels of price competition are thrown into the mix, it surely becomes difficult for large numbers of competing operators to survive in all but the largest markets. The withdrawal of Millicom International Cellualar from Asia, then, may stimulate much-needed market consolidations in at least two of its three existing Asian territories. Rumours from Bangladesh also suggest that similar developments may be in the offing elsewhere across the continent.

Millicom's withdrawal from Asia to prompt (much-needed?) market consolidations?

How many cellcos does it take to deliver quality, choice and value? It depends where you ask...

A number of recent blog posts here at DTW have chewed over the issue of how many mobile operators is the optimum number for a given market. That has usually been 'optimum' in the sense of a number conducive to a level of competition which allows all players to turn a decent profit. It occurs to me now that I've spent less time thinking about the optimum number of MNOs in terms of making up a competitive environment which delivers choice, value and quality to subscribers.

This last point seems to be on the minds of Nepal's new Minister for Information and Communications, Shankar Pokharel, according to a report from Cellular News yesterday.

The Minister has warned the country's two cellcos that the Government might consider licensing a third mobile operator if they do not improve their quality of service. This is despite the fact that the current operators have a guarantee that no new networks will enter the market until September 2010 at the earliest.

This is not the first time this year that the county's MNOs have faced criticism and intervention.

In March, according to the Global Mobile Daily service from Informa Telecoms & Media, the country's telecoms regulator was pressuring operators to lower interconnection rates, the telcos having failed to reduce rates when asked to do so in February. The feeling would seem to be, then, that high prices have been keeping services beyond the reach of much of the population of a country whose economic development is hampered by a number of factors - the country's isolation from the world's major land, air and sea transport routes; hilly and mountainous terrain making the building of roads and other infrastructure difficult and expensive, which means volume distribution of goods is very challenging; a relative lack of tangible natural resources and the importance of agriculture in the economy meaning that over 75% of the workforce is employed in low-paying farm work; around half the working-age population being unemployed or underemployed. Mobile penetration, according to WCIS, currently stands at just 18.23%.

One of the two incumbent mobile operators, Mero Mobile, appeared to be responsive to concerns about prohibitively high tariffs by late March, when it announced substantial cuts to prepaid prices, according to GMD. Mero Mobile is now part of TeliaSonera's Eurasia business unit, the giant Scandinavian telco having acquired a controlling interest last year.

The growth-inhibiting factors described above make for a challenging market for Mero Mobile and its rival in the cellular space, Nepal Telecom, which is also the county's incumbent fixed-line operator. Of these factors, the rugged physical geography of the country presents a number of problems. This is clear from the fact, as reported in yesterday's Cellular News article, that the TeliaSonera-controlled MNO has announced that it will invest USD 120 million in 2009 and USD 130 in 2010 on boosting its network coverage, with some of the investment to go on increasing back-up power supplies to cope with the unreliable national power grid. Nepal Telecom has apparently also recently announced plans to boost its own back-up generators and switch to renewable power supplies where possible due to the same reliability issues.

The nature of the terrain also necessitates the use of satellite communications for cellular backhaul, as demonstrated by the incumbent telco selecting Gilat Satellite Networks earlier this year to ensure coverage in rural communities.

It remains to be seen if the new Nepali IT/telecoms Minister will open the market to a third operator and, if he does, how much enthusiasm this market arouses among strategic investors. Clearly, Nepal is an under-penetrated territory and, with a population of nearly 30 million, could represent a decent-sized opportunity. A new entrant, however, will need to be mindful of the challenges presented by the country's under-developed economy and infrastructure.

From a market in which the government is keen to add another MNO into the mix, we now turn our attention to one where this is decidedly not the case.

According to a TeleGeography article yesterday, the Information & Communication Technology Agency (ITCA) of Mauritius is of the opinion that four MNOs would be to many for the island nation of around 1.3 million souls.

Three cellcos currently compete there. Orange is the clear market leader with an estimated 57.50% share of mobile subscriptions. Next comes Emtel, a company in which Millicom International Cellular has a stake and which claims to have been the first mobile telephony operation in the whole southern hemisphere in 1989.

A much smaller player, founded in 2003, is Mahanagar Telephone Mauritius, a subsidiary of Indian state-owned telco MTNL. This company, which also provides broadband and fixed-wireless telephony services, has just an estimated 2.67% of the country's mobile subs on its CDMA network - Orange and Emitel operate GSM and 3G W-CDMA networks.

The company hoping to join these MNOs to compete in a mobile market with a 83.55% penetration rate is Outremer Telecom, an operator with a presence in the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique and Reunion. According to yesterday's TeleGeography piece, this company has been dealt a blow to its plans to extend its footprint to Mauritius, with the ICTA declining its application for a mobile licence. Outremer Telecom says it plans to appeal the decision to the ICT Appeal Tribunal.

The ICTA told the company it had decided not to issue a fourth mobile operating licence, citing the global economic downturn and the need to protect the investment plans of incumbent operators as the reason. ICTA is understood to have received official complaints from Orange and Emtel.

Presumably, ICTA believes that the current line-up of operator delivers quality and value to the mobile consumer of Mauritius.

How many cellcos does it take to deliver quality, choice and value? It depends where you ask...

Azerbaijan: as the Ministry pushes 3G licences, the market is eyed by giant Russian cellco

It's time to take a break from writing about the rumoured sales of Zain's African assets to Vivendi (or whichever potential buyer is the flavour of the day), although I daresay there will be cause to return to that theme before too long.

Instead, I wanted to take the opportunity to take a look at a part of the world about which I got to learn a little while producing three annual iterations of a conference for telecoms execs from the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia and the Caspian region. One of these countries, Azerbaijan, is, according to recent local reports, moving closer to making 3G mobile licence awards, with the the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies planning to distribute spectrum by the end of this year.

This is apparently not the Ministry's first attempt to bring 3G services to Azeris. According to a brief TeleGeography report, the MCIT submitted a 3G frequency use proposal to the country's cellcos in July 2008, "but few developments have emerged since."

Now, according the the Minister, Ali Abbasov, all the three of the country's GSM operators have already applied to the Ministry for 3G licences. These three operators are: Azercell, Bakcell and AzerFon (brand name: Nar Mobile), with market shares of 58.66%, 22.29% and 18.00% respectively as of March 2009, according to WCIS. A fourth player, CDMA operator CATEL/FONEX has just over one per cent of the country's mobile subs.

Given that oil-rich Azerbaijan is potentially quite an attractive market, it is striking that only one of these operators is associated with a significant multi-country group - market-leading Azercell is controlled by Fintur Holdings, a joint venture between giant Scandinavian telco TeliaSonera and Turkey's Turkcell. Fintur Holdings, via a mix of majority stakes and management control arrangements, is also active in Kazakhstan, Moldova, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Cambodia and Nepal.

Strikingly absent from the Azeri market are big Russian cellcos, two of which, Vimpelcom and MTS, have each built a multi-country footprint across other parts of the former Soviet Union. This may be set to change, if recent comments from the latter company's CEO are interpreted as representing a firm commitment to further international expansion.

Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the of the St Petersburg Economic Forum earlier this month, MTS CEO Mikhail Shamolin said "there are two countries (where) we are not present yet and I believe we should be present... Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan."

Shamolin added that MTS is not thinking in terms of start-up operations in either country, which seems sensible given that mobile penetration in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan stand at 71.11% and 93.81% respectively according to WCIS. "We are looking at acquisition opportunities there," said Shamolin. "We are waiting until the right time comes. When this opportunity shows up then we will consider it carefully." He added that the company was not holding specific talks with any Kazakh or Azeri firms.

In Azerbaijan, you would have to guess that TeliaSonera and Turkcell will look to hold on to their market-leading MNO. So let's see which of Bakcell or Nar Mobile might be targeted for an MTS takeover.

Azerbaijan: as the Ministry pushes 3G licences, the market is eyed by giant Russian cellco

TeliaSonera poised to take over Latvian operations - but only once we've ridden out the downturn

My focus here tends to be on the telecoms sector in states to which we can, without too much controversy, attribute the sometimes contentious labels 'emerging markets' or 'developing countries'.

Not a great deal of time is spent here, therefore, discussing events in Europe - even the less-highly developed countries thereof. That said, I retain a strong personal interest in the Central and Eastern parts of the continent, not least because I lived and worked in Poland in the early-mid 1990s, a time of fast-paced socioeconomic change, the effects of which I felt at first hand. For me at least, a decade after I was travelling around the CEE region from my Polish base, the gaps between Western and Eastern Europe seem smaller all the time. I've often wondered for how much longer it will be meaningful to think in terms of there being a distinct CEE region.

One CEE state which I've not yet visited is Latvia, which is a glaring omission given that I have a distant family connection to the country. I daresay I will remedy this before too long. Until then, I follow telecoms sector developments there via the usefully informative blog maintained by Juris Kaža, am a Latvian-American journalist living in Latvia.

Today, Juris posted a very recent video interview with Kenneth Karlberg, President of Mobility Services for giant Scandinavian telco TeliaSonera, which owns a 49% stake in Latvia's incumbent fixed-line operator Lattelecom, which in turn owns 23% of LMT, the country's second-ranked mobile operator in terms of share of subscriptions. LMT's other shareholders are state-owned TV and radio broadcaster VAS Latvijas Valsts Radio un Televīzijas Centrs, a Latvian state privatisation fund and TeliaSonera. Again, I think I understand from the interview with Mr Karlberg that the Scandinavian telco would like to acquire any shares it does not already hold in the company:



When, then, might TeliaSonera be able to consolidate its position in Latvia? According to a recent article in Baltic Course magazine, any sale of Government telecoms assets will have to wait "until after the economic crisis is over." This view comes straight from Economy Minister Artis Kampars, who is also quoted as saying that "running a company, whose main goal is to generate as large a profit as possible for its owners, is not a government function". This does not mean, however, retreating from that function with undue haste, according to Mr Kampars who feels the sale of Lattelecom shares "must be organized so that it brings as much money as possible for the state." For Kampars, to do this will involve waiting for the Latvian (and global) economy to begin to recover from the current malaise. "In the meantime," says Kampars, "we have to streamline the company's management and expand the company's business also outside Latvia in order to increase the value of the company."

This streamlining, if carried out, seems set to hit the pockets of some senior people on the Latvian telecoms scene. The Baltic Course article states that in Kampars' opinion the current Lattelecom council, which has eleven members, needs to be downsized by reducing the number of council members elected by the state of Lavia as well as by TeliaSonera. Mr. Kampars also believes that the salary for Lattelecom board chairperson should not exceed the salaries paid to board chairpersons at other government-run companies. From that, I infer that there does exist some considerable gap.

TeliaSonera poised to take over Latvian operations - but only once we've ridden out the downturn

Who provides telecoms services in states with limited recognition?

Late last year, I had more than one opportunity to chat with friends in the telecoms space who have worked for businesses with operations in Georgia - the transcaucasian country, not the US state. Inevitably, the subject of the August armed conflict with Russia and with separatist groups from South Ossetia and Abkhazia was discussed. I did not hear reports of very serious damage to telecoms infrastructure. This is confirmed by an extract from a statement by a shareholder in Magticom, one of the two mobile operators licensed by the Tbilisi Government:

"Magticom started the year with a strong performance compared to budget and last year. The conflict with Russia during August caused some damage both to the Georgian economy and to future economic prospects. The full effects of the conflict are yet to be determined. Magticom's physical infrastructure, however, was not badly damaged bythe conflict."

Magticom, which had a 42.28% share of Georgia's 3,352,100 mobile subscriptions by December(according to WCIS), launched a CDMA450 WLL network last summer. According to my fomer Informa Telecoms & Media colleague Gemma Bunting, writing for Mobile Communications Europe, Magti Fix is primarily aimed at people in rural areas with poor fixed-line access. As Gemma noted in her article, Magticom is also active 2G and 3G mobile services as well as Internet access via Wi-Fi and WiMAX.

The Magticom WiMAX offering caught the eye of Andrew Mitchell, writing for for Yankee Group's 4G Trends next generation wireless publication last month. Mitchell noticed Magticom's launch of a mobile WiMAX service offering on February 9, quoting the company's CEO David Lee: "The service we are launching is not only the country’s first WiMAX offering but also the fastest Internet connection available in Georgia to date." The carrier will deliver mobile WiMAX services to both consumer and business markets and plans to include VoIP as well, notes Andrew Mitchell, who also observes that offering wireless connectivity in a country like Georgia presents a number of unique challenges such as mountainous geography and the distribution of its population. Mitchell feels that WiMAX "has continually demonstrated an ability to rise to the engineering and business challenges that are unique to emerging markets."

As far as the Georgian Government is concerned, Magticom should be competing with only two other mobile operators. Of these, Geocell is the country's mobile market leader and is one of the CIS outposts of the Fintur Holdings/TeliaSonera Eurasia empire. The third officially licensed competitor is the Georgian subsidiary of Vimpelcom, which has managed to grab just a 6.78% share of the market since its launch in March 2007.

These are not, however, the only mobile operators active on land which the Georgian Government considers to be within its sovereign territory.

In the aftermath of the August conflict, Russia recognized the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states. Of UN member states, only Nicaragua has followed suit. Abkhazia, which lies at the eastern edge of the Black Sea, has been the scene of conflicts and tensions since the disintegration of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s, when ethnic tensions grew between the Abkhaz and Georgians over Georgia's desire for independence. The 13-month Abkhazian War began in August 1992, and hostilities flared up again in 1998 and 2001.

In the telecoms domain, Abkhazian desire for independence from Georgia is manifested in the form of two GSM operators which offer services in the disputed region.

One of these is A-Mobile, which started its operations on November 25, 2006. WCIS estimates that the operator now has just over 44,000 subscribers. The other, Aquafon, was established in March 2003, with its network becoming operational on July of the same year. WCIS market intelligence indicates that the operator now has around 82,000 subscribers. The population of Abkhazia is estimated to be be somewhere between 160,000 and 190,000. In September 2008, Aquafon officially launched its 3G network. 51% of Aquafon's shares are owned by Mondeo Holdings, an offshore company based in the British Virgin Islands, in turn owned Bermuda-registered ComTel Eastern, which also owns 31% of MegaFon, one of Russia's 'big three' cellcos.

On January 23rd, the UK's Guardian newspaper gave space to an article which was extremely critical of what its author percieves as the Russian Government's desire to "revive a lost empire, the Soviet Union." The writer of this piece, the lawyer Anthony Julius, alleges that "Russian businesses have... been encouraged to collude with state and state-security entities in order to expand Russian influence in the region," adding that "the Russian mobile telecoms company Megafon has operated in South Ossetia since 2004, and Aquafon (Megafon's subsidiary) has been in Abkhazia since 2003." Megafon, writes Julius "does not have a licence to operate in either region [but] on the day that fighting broke out in August last year, the company extended its coverage further into Georgian territory."

Not long before the conflict of last August, Georgia's telecoms regulatory agency had fined Megafon USD 3500 over what it alleged to be an illegal network, operated without a license, according to a Global Mobile Daily article at the time.

Although Russia and Nicaragua are the only UN member states to have recognised Abkhazia and South Ossetia, these two regions are also recognised by the de facto independent state of Transnistria, another disputed area within the former Soviet Union. Located mostly in a strip of land between the Dniester River and the Ukrainian border, Transnistria declared independence after the dissolution of the USSR. This led to a brief war with Moldova that started in March 1992 and was concluded by the ceasefire of July 1992. As with Abkhazkia, Transnistria is home to a telecoms operator of its own. Interdniestrcom, founded in 1998, offers Internet access and operates a CDMA2000 mobile network whose coverage area includes almost all of the Transnistria region.

Another de facto independent state on former Soviet territory is the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, a predominantly Armenian-populated region which was the object of a dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan as far back as 1918, when both countries gained independence from the Russian Empire. In the final years of the Soviet Union, the region re-emerged as a source of dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, culminating in the Nagorno-Karabakh War fought from 1988 to 1994. The country remains unrecognised by any international organization or country, including Armenia.

Again, this is a de facto state served by its own telecoms company. Karabakh Telecom offers GSM mobile services, PSTN services and Internet access, covering 75% of Nagorno-Karabakh and almost 100% of the capital Stepanakert and its suburbs.

In Africa, one state stands out for existing largely in a de jure capacity. Somalia has a weak but largely recognised central government authority, the Transitional Federal Government, but this is only the latest in a series of ineffectual, externally recognized governing authorities. De facto control of the north of the country resides in the regional authorities. Of these, Puntland, Northland State, Maakhir, Galmudug, acknowledge the authority of the TFG and maintain their declaration of autonomy within a federated Somalia, while Central, Southern Somalia and Kismayo are in the control of the Islamic Courts Union and Al-Shabab. Baidoa is currently the seat of the TFG, and Somalia's commercial centre. On the other hand, the Somaliland region in the north, with its capital in Hargeisa, has declared independence and does not recognise the TFG as governing authority. Its self-declared independence is unrecognised internationally due in part to opposition from the TFG and other countries, such as neighbouring Ethiopia, which fear ensuing secessionist movements.

Golis Telecom Somalia operates in North East Somalia, offering fixed and mobile services in both Puntland and the self-declared independent state of Somaliland.

I daresay this is not a truly exhaustive tour of telcos operating in states with varying degrees of limited diplomatic recognition. I just wanted to explore briefly the question of who extends communications services to people who live in the world's disputed territories. I enjoyed meandering around these curious places and if anyone reading this found it interesting that's even better.

Who provides telecoms services in states with limited recognition?

Nordic telcos' emerging markets plans for 'challenging' 2009

In July 2007 I was pleased to provide meeting facilities for in Dhaka, Bangladesh for a gathering of the South Asian GSM Forum, whose Chairman Mehboob Chowdhury was a key supporter of the following day's Mobile South Asia conference of which I was co-organiser. Mr Chowdhury, a former Chief Commercial Officer of Orascom Telecom-backed Banglalink, had fellow Forum board member Stein Naevdal run the pre-conference meeting. Mr Naevdal, now CMO at Bakcell of Azerbaijan, was with Bangladeshi operator Grameenphone at the time, a company owned by Grameen Telecom and Telenor.

Having had the opportunity to meet members of Grameenphone's senior management team, and having had a quick look round a Grameenphone retail store on the busy streets of Dhaka, I have continued to take an interest in the performance of this and other MNOs across Telenor's collection of emerging markets operations.

An article carried yesterday by Telecompaper reported Telenor's cautious forecast for the "challenging" year ahead: stable organic revenues and an adjusted EBITDA margin around 34 percent, versus a reported 34.7 percent in 2008.

The article indicates that the Norwegian company's $US 1 billion purchase of a majority stake in Indian cellco Unitech Wireless is not expected to add significantly to revenue and will generate and EBITDA loss of of NOKA 2-2.5 billion ($US 295 million-369 million). Revenues are not expected to begin flowing from the greenfield operator, which has licences in all 22 of India's telecoms circles, until mid-2009.

The largest shareholder in Telenor, the 7th-ranked telecoms operator in the world in terms of subscriber numbers, is the Norwegian Government, which was apparently initially supportive when the business proposed a rights issue in order to fund the Unitech Wireless purchase while maintaining the company's credit rating.

While Telenor CEO Jon Fredrik Baksaas has continued to express great confidence in the long-term value of the move into the Indian market, investors have not responded well to news of the acquisition. The proposed rights issue has also attracted criticism, not least from Norway's Conservative opposition, which attempted to persude the Government to prevent Telenor from selling shares to fund the Indian adventure.

A Bloomberg TV interview with Baksaas on November 9th was prefaced with a reminder that Telenor's share price fell by as much as 20% on the trading day on which the Unitech deal was announced. Baksaas reponded by saying "The negative swing in the share price was greater than we had expected... but in order to build a long-term... mobile operation takes years." He reminded viewers that the company has been making such long term bets in Ukraine, in Russia, in Malaysia and in other countries for many years. "It is a period of investment that's needed in order to grow towards a sustainable, long-term position," Baksaas explained.

Baksaas told viewers about the criticism Telenor faced when entering Ukraine, then "one of the poorest countries in Europe" in 1997 and stated that Kyivstar now one of the best performing contributors to the Telenor business.

When interviewed by the same channel twelve days later, by which time the fall in Telenor's share price (since the Unitech announcement) was 26%, described by the interviewer as the largest in eight years, Baksaas was speaking about the good growth prospects afforded by India's low teledensity relative to other countries in the region. He sounded lukewarm about the prospect of Unitech getting involved in the Indian 3G licence auction, saying that the company would be intitially focused on "basic services". Baksaas was also keen to express the belief that the telecoms industry is likely to be more resilient than many sectors in a downturn.

Late last month, Telenor finally withdrew the proposed rights issue, electing instead to fund its investment in Unitech Wireless in India through a combination of cash flow and issuance of additional debt. A proposed immediate result of this will be to make no payment of dividend to shareholders for 2008 or 2009.

Yesterday, another Nordic telecoms giant was reporting a positive contribution from emerging markets business units. As reported by Telecompaper, TeliaSonera's Eurasian activities continued to show strong growth, with sales up 45 percent to SEK 4.2 billion and EBITDA rising 57 percent to SEK 2.1 billion. Consolidated since October 1, 2008, the operations in Nepal and Cambodia affected net sales positively by 5.8 percent. However, according to Total Telecom, TeliaSonera cautioned that it needs to "be prepared for a potentially drawn-out economic downturn that may affect consumer and corporate behavior."

Nordic telcos' emerging markets plans for 'challenging' 2009