Eurasia Com: doing the business in Turkey and the CIS

Back in January, I wrote about the Eurasia Com conference which the good folks at Informa Telecoms & Media host annually in Istanbul, taking place in either March or April. At the time, I thought it was unlikely that I would be able to attend. Happily, it did turn out to be possible after all,  meaning that I am able to report some of what was discussed at the Conrad Hotel on 23rd and 24th March.

For those not familiar with the event or with the wider series of related conference-plus-exhibition events of which it is a part, a few words of explanation:

• Informa's Com World Series evolved from what was once known as the GSM (and later GSM>3G) World Series of events. The GSM series was itself a spin-off of the GSM World Congress (now Mobile World Congress), of which Informa was the original founder.
• The GSM World Series brought scaled-down versions of the main event to a selection of locations ranged around the world's emerging markets. In each location, the aim was to gather large numbers of decision-makers from the mobile operators of the region around the host city. These locations included cities in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe.
• The Com World Series brand was introduced a few years ago to reflect a perceived need to offer meeting points for a broader community than just GSM mobile operators. The organisers were mindful of the idea that the previously quite sharp fixed-mobile distinction was becoming increasingly fuzzy around the world. They thought about what had once been pure play mobile operators offering other kinds of broadband service, either by building new networks (copper, fibre, fixed-wireless) or in partnership with established fixed-line operators. They thought about new mobility propositions from companies whose previous offerings had not been in the cellular space. They thought about incumbent fixed-line operators merging with previously quite separate mobile business units (think in terms of what Deutsche Telekom is doing all over the CEE region).
• Throughout this evolution, Informa's series of events has stuck to a pretty successful business model, which is still in place today - operators (and other telecoms service providers) attend for free, with most of the revenue coming from any organisations with products and services to sell into the operator space. This includes the major network technology vendors and all manner of software companies, systems integrators, consultancies etc.
• Eurasia Com is a relatively new part of the Com World Series, although this year's iteration was the fourth to take place in Istanbul, having been relocated from Almaty, Kazakhstan, where the event first took place in 2006.
• The challenge which the organisers face - and which I feel they met pretty successfully this year - is bringing together a crowd from what are quite diverse markets. A large Turkish contingent (representing the likes of Turk Telekom, Vodafone Turkey, Turkcell, Avea and Koc.net) mixes with delegates from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, making it necessary to arrange for everyone to gain from presentations in Turkish, Russian and English. If you attend next year, expect to spend some time wearing a headset which pipes the simultaneous interpretation right into your ears.

That, then, is a little about the event, its origins and how it works on the day. The challenge mentioned above (making the conference relevant for both Turkish delegates and for guests from the CIS) was dealt with this year by having elements of the second day billed specifically as a 'Turkey focus' session, thereby acknowledging that there probably do exist some differences between the concerns of the local audience of those of the visitors from the former Soviet republics where market conditions are quite different.

I am pleased to report that this worked well. As a veteran of more conferences than I care to remember, I have got used to seeing events looking busy on day one and feeling a lot less vibrant on the second day. At Eurasia Com 2010, delegate numbers were, I think, possibly even higher on 24th March than they had been on 23rd.

So, what was discussed during these two days of slideware, panel sessions and offline networking? Well, in the sessions I managed to catch, highlights included:

• Informa analyst Gemma Bunting cautioning delegates to remain open minded about real mobile penetration rates across the CIS, noting that multi-SIM usage makes accurate measurement quite difficult and pointing out that in the supposedly saturated Russian market over 20 million subscriptions were added by operators last year.
• Informa's Bunting noting that ARPU is declining sharply in some markets - Uzbekistan was given as an example - USD 9/month in 2007, dropping to USD 4/month by 2009.
• Gemma Bunting wondering about the impact of Tele2's acquisition of a mobile operation in Kazakhstan and observing that the Swedish group is known for its aggressive pricing.
• Ineke Botter, CEO of Azeri cellco Bakcell indicating the a mobile money offering from her company might not be iminent but was certainly "on the roadmap".
• Mustafa Kiral of Russian telecoms investment group Altimo indicating that his company is in the market for opportunities to acquire majority stakes in telecoms operators in emerging markets - African markets were mentioned.
• Altimo's Kiral sounding lukewarm at best when the conference Chairman asked if Altimo is considering investments in the wireline space.
• Mehmet Hasanov of Aztelekom talking up the revenue potential of the wholesale business and wondering why telcos' marketing people are generally so inclined not to get excited about it.
• A few snippets about the planned privatisation of Tajiktelecom.

I was not surprised, also, to learn more in offline conversations than I did from listening to presentations. The lesson here, for those few conference veterans who do not already know, is that it's important to get proactive at these gatherings - get among the delegates and speakers, working the room and maximising the opportunity to develop a good number of valuable contacts under one roof.

My guess is that 2009 was at least moderately challenging for conference organisers and that delegate numbers across the events industry may have been negatively affected by financial worries on the part of target audiences. My recent experience in Istanbul, however, just went to confirm that there continues to be no substitute for making face-to-face contact with potential new clients and partners and that events of this type can be a pretty good one-stop-shop for doing so. I would also particularly recommend this and other events in Informa's Com World Series for the way in which they gather crowds from given higher growth regions around the globe.

Eurasia Com: doing the business in Turkey and the CIS

Mobile industry nicely balances profit motive with improving lives: not everyone agrees...

It has been a tendency of this blog to eulogise the ways in which telecoms companies with business units in developing countries are able to reconcile efforts to alleviate poverty and misery with their need to turn a profit and grow shareholder value.

I therefore tend to be very encouraged when I read articles such as that written in April by Rohit Singh of the Overseas Development Agency (ODI), a British think tank focused on international development and humanitarian issues. Singh writes about the numerous studies which support the idea that a rapid increase in mobile penetration contributes significantly to economic growth. He discusses the incremental, tranformational and production benefits brought by mobile phones:

• Incremental benefits: improving what people already do – offering them faster and cheaper communication, often substituting for costly and risky journeys.
• Transformational benefits: offering something new such mobile banking, enabling the unbanked to store value.
• Production benefits: resulting from the creation of new livelihoods, not only through professional telecommunications jobs but also through activities like re-selling airtime or phone cards.
  

Much praise, then, has been directed by DevelopingTelecomsWatch at the efforts of mobile operators worldwide, notably in Africa. None of what has been written here suggests that there might be a possible downside to the rapid growth of mobile infrastructure and services in the places where the world's least affluent people live their lives.

There are those, however, who voice precisely that concern. Notable, I think, is Steve Song, who spent ten years working on ICT for Development issues at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), a Canadian state-owned enterprise whose role is to help developing countries use science and technology to find practical, long-term solutions to the social, economic, and environmental problems they face. Song is now based in Cape Town, where he has taken up a fellowship with the Shuttleworth Foundation, an organisation which works to drive social and policy innovation in the fields of education and technology through policy dialogue and practical projects.

I was very interested in Steve Song's reaction to Kenyan cellco Safaricom winning a UN-HABITAT award for its M-Pesa mobile money services. This got a mention in the recent discussion here about whether mobile banking and money transfer services branded and run by cellular operators in developing countries might be vulnerable to a competitive threat from apparently operator-neutral solutions such as the one recently announced by Monitise. My own reaction to a cellco being lauded for how its services improve the lives of poor people is always very positive - it makes me pleased to make my living in and around an industry whose technologies can be a force for good. On hearing about Safaricom's award, Steve Song, however, was prompted to consider, not for the first time, "the effective monopolies/oligopolies" that mobile operators in Africa have become.

While Song acknowledges "the miracle that mobile phones are" and says that "there can't be many people who still doubt the direct value that mobile phones provide to people", he is concerned that the wealth that is being generated by cellcos in Africa is being distributed too unevenly. To support this assertion, he cites the case of South Africa's MTN apparently acknowledging that is subsidises 3G data traffic with revenue from its core voice and SMS business. This means, says Song, that when it comes to communication, "the poor in South Africa are effectively subsidising the wealthy".

Song also invites us to consider "the microeconomics of the edge cases of mobile access" - the case of a remote village served by a single cell tower. He contends that in this scenario, the majority of calls made would be to other users in the same area, i.e. local calls. Song also asserts that people in Africa "are spending substantial amounts of their disposable income on access." So, he argues, if, say 50% of the phone calls made in a remote village are local and if people are spending 50% of their disposable income on mobile access, "that means that 25% of their disposable income is being siphoned out of that village."

Perhaps with my own mobile bill in mind, I initially wondered whether it could really be true that even very poor people could possibly be spending as much as 50% of their disposable income on voice and SMS. Apparently so, according to a 2008 report from Research ICT Africa, a twenty-country network hosted by the EDGE Institute in Johannesburg and funded by Steve Song's former employers, the IDRC.

We can see from the table below that the report has indeed identifed African countries where consumers spend more than 50% of their disposable income on mobile services. These include Kenya (52.5%), Nigeria (52.4%) and Zambia (60.3%). According to this study, for the same three countries, the percentage of disposable cash spent on cellular services for the bottom 75% of the population by disposable income rises to 63.6%, 60.9% and 73.9% respectively.
Is this phenomenon - people spending such a major chunk of their incomes on mobile phone charges - purely an unavoidable consequence of how poor these people are? Or might more competitive mobile markets deliver considerably lower prices, thereby freeing up African consumers' cash to be spent on other items?

Several times, a DevelopingTelecomsWatch piece has focused on a particular country and voiced the idea that perhaps that state's mobile market is currently contested by too many cellcos - too many in the sense of not all of them being able to turn a profit and justify further investment. In the few months since this blog's inception, that question has been raised about Cambodia and Sri Lanka and about Tanzania, Burundi and Gabon.

Along the way, I've sometimes been quite critical of operators with aggressively low pricing. Metfone (the Cambodian subsidiary of Vietnamese MNO Viettel) is one example. I have expressed the view that Metfone's distribution of free SIMs and airtime is a "disruptive" market entry strategy which is "very nice for quickly building a subscriber base, but taken to its logical conclusion this can seriously erode overall market value for all players."

What I've had in mind is an idea I've heard articulated countless times at many, many telecoms industry conferences - that telecoms groups will only invest in and improve the communications infrastructure of those countries where good profits can be earned; that most operators naturally settle around a band of prices which enable profitable operation and happy shareholders for all competitors; that operators which sell their services below the lowest end of that band of prices can be accused of destroying martket value and threatening the ability of others to keep investing; that regulators/governments which allow any market actors to do this are not acting responsibly.

Steve Song would presumably not sympathise with these sentiments because he rails against the failure of telecoms regulators in Africa either to license enough new market entrants or to curb the excesses of incumbent players with significant market power. He feels that this has led to a situation where existing operators "collude to maintain high profits", citing the global price of SMS per byte vs. the true cost of delivering text messages.

The ODI's Rohit Singh also deals with the role of telecoms sector regulatory agencies in developing countries. He writes about how governments should oversee such issues as interconnection between the operators, spectrum allocation, and access to the international gateway. He argues that the importance of this role is shown when, in the absence of regulated interconnection tariffs, dominant firms charge high prices for connecting calls from other networks. Singh asserts that this limits effective competition, with dominant firms earning monopoly profits, keeping their prices high, and having little incentive to expand or innovate.

Without effective regulation, Singh continues, ownership of bottleneck infrastructure by dominant firms can diminish the developmental impact of the mobile sector by pushing up prices and restricting coverage.

When Singh reaches for an example of this kind of failure of regulation, he thinks of Zambia, where he says international calls are very expensive because the state-owned fixed-line operator charges high tariffs to private operators to access the international gateway. This distortion, he argues, then affects the domestic calls market, because private operators have to subsidise their international calls to compete with the public sector firm. In this characterisation, private sector mobile operators are the good guys of the piece, forced rather than inclined to charge high prices for their services. My feeling, then, is that Rohit Singh and Steve Song have quite different views of the optimally desirable interplay between telecoms operators and regulators.

Going beyond the issue of pricing, in an earlier blog post, Song expresses concern about how mobile operators in developing countries might conceivably take advantage of the ways in which cellphones have become indispensable in people's lives. Drawing on a March 2009 presentation by Nathan Eagle, the developer of crowdsourcing application txteagle, Song observes that no one in Kenya can afford not to have a mobile phone because "even if you are digging a ditch by the side of the road, day labour is now organised via SMS." Song feels that this means that mobile operators have Kenyans by the throat. To support this argument, he discusses another anecdote from Nathan Eagle's talk, which concerns a water pump manufacturer in Kenya that, by combining an M-Pesa-enabled, solar-powered metering system with their water pumps, has completely changed its business model. This company is apparently now giving water pumps away for free and then making a profit by selling access to water through the M-Pesa service. In his presentation, Eagle observes that Michael Joseph, the CEO of Safaricom, "loves this because you have to have a Safaricom account to get water."

Steve Song ask whether he is alone in finding this a little disturbing and feels that there is something wrong about a single mobile operator acting as the gatekeeper to water supply. Song argues that "for any village in this situation, Safaricom can charge whatever they like".

When I stumbled upon Steve Song's blog, I felt it would be interesting to draw attention to the uncomfortable questions which he raises. After all, DevelopingTelecomsWatch was never intended as a cheerleader for a particular view of the role of the communications sector in developing countries and emerging markets. So, for anyone else who has so far been unaware of Song's writing, I hope it has been refreshing to consider the ideas of someone who observes the actions of mobile operators with a critical eye. What I like about Song's writing is that his arguments are not weakened by an unattractively shrill tone. However, if you're curious to hear from someone who really doesn't mince his words about cellcos, I'd suggest you read a recent article by Llewellyn Kriel about South African operators and the country's telecoms regulator.

Mobile industry nicely balances profit motive with improving lives: not everyone agrees...

Cellco-branded mobile banking to thrive without challenge?

If you were asked to reach for an example of mobile financial services gaining traction really impressively, perhaps you would think immediately of the M-Pesa service offered by the Kenyan cellco Safaricom, in which Vodafone owns a minority stake.

I daresay most readers are somewhat familiar with the service. For those who are not, Safaricom's TV advertisement provides a concise demonstration of the simplicity and utility of M-Pesa:



Since its launch in 2007, M-Pesa has attracted widespread praise. In February 2008, the 'send money home'-themed marketing campaign, of which this ad was a component, scooped the 'Best Broadcast Commercial' gong at the annual Global Mobile Awards ceremony hosted by the GSM Association. This year, 'Best Mobile Money Service' was introduced as a new award category at the same ceremony - Safaricom and Vodafone were joint winners. More recently, M-Pesa has been feted by UN-HABITAT, the United Nations agency for human settlements whose mission is to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all. In June, the agency announced the first Habitat Business Awards for best practice in categories including affordable housing, clean urban energy solutions and innovative ITC solutions. In the latter category, Safaricom made the winning submission for M-Pesa, which the jury felt boosts urban entrepreneurship and clearly demonstrates the impact of innovative IT solutions for sustainable urbanisation.

In its submission to the judges, Safaricom mentions Kenya's large 'unbanked' population - people, largely from the urban poor, to whom opening a bank accounts is off limits. The submission document explains that such people face challenges around the safety of carrying cash (mugging and carjacking are cited as dangers they face) and the high cost of transferring monies to relatives in rural areas via existing channels.

The benefits for the consumer, then, are quite clear - but what does a mobile operator such as Safaricom gain from entering the mobile money space? Dawn Marshallsay of mobile^SQUARED, writing in January, emphasised how mobile financial services drive up cellphone usage. She also quotes Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph, who told delegates at a London conference that "banking is a value-added service for mobile, not a money-making product"

"The main purpose of mobile banking is getting the customer to have an emotional attachment with the operator as they entrust their monetary details with the operator. Customers then start using their phones more in general," Joseph continued.

Where one operator in a developing country achieves differentiation as the only provider of such services, benefits for that operator, then, would presumably include achieving a high degree of customer stickiness in a market where the vast majority of mobile users are highly price sensitive (due to their relative poverty vs. their counterparts in developed countries) and where prepaid plans are dominant.

This model, in which consumers are locked into a specific mobile operator's set of financial services, is open to challenge, however. Earlier this month, Richard Wray of the UK's Guardian newspaper wrote about a recently-announced deal between mobile banking firm Monitise and Paynet, a company which operates ATMs and electronic payment services across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in partnership with thirty-five banks. Wray writes that the deal "will bring financial services to millions of people in Africa for the first time". The suite of services will include checking balances, moving money between accounts, and enabling customers to fill a mobile-wallet with cash to pay bills or send money to relatives.

A pretty close resemblance to M-Pesa and other mobile operator-run services, then. The crucial difference emphasised by Wray, though, is that while operator-branded services demand that users are customers of a particular MNO or are connected with a specific bank, the Monitise system is open to any financial institution and any mobile phone network that wants to plug into it. If I have understood this correctly, it seems, then, that M-Pesa and rival services such as Zain Kenya's Zap are to be challenged by an operator-neutral alternative. Monitise CEO Andrew Lukies believes that "mobile money is most effective as an 'open ecosystem' where you can transact with anybody or any organisation, regardless of your bank or mobile operator. Another differentiator, according to the Monitise Group's press release on this deal, is that "uniquely among mobile banking services, [it] enables people without a bank account to use its services, as well as providing traditional mobile banking to those with accounts."

It remains to be seen how far operator-neutral services of this sort pose a competitive threat to cellco-branded solutions such as M-Pesa, Zap, Orange Money (launched by France Telecom's mobile operation in Côte d'Ivoire) and the service launched by MTN Uganda in March, which the South African group hopes to roll out across its African footprint.

Assuming any such threat can be withstood, services like M-Pesa - improving the lives of the unbanked while providing cellcos with a customer retention tool - seem to be good for consumers, good for society and good for the operator.

None of this is to suggest that M-Pesa and services like it are never subject to criticism or concerns around their reliability and security.

Earlier this month, writes Victor Juma of Kenya's Business Daily, a technical hitch in the M-Pesa service caused anxious customers to crowd at outlets to have their accounts updated. For several days, it seems, users were unsure of whether some transactions had been properly credited to their accounts.

The service also appears to have been targeted by organised criminals depositing counterfeit currency via M-Pesa agents. Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper reported on 4th August that staff in two bureaus in the towns of Kutus and Kianyaga had received fake money worth Sh29,000 (about USD 380). Accounts used by the fraudsters were topped up without agents spotting the counterfeit cash. I assume that fraudulent deposits of this kind can be stopped once noticed, but this incident demonstrates that no system is completely immune from human error. Having visited Kenya, but never having stepped inside a retail bank there, I have no idea whether counter staff in banks there are more highly trained than M-Pesa agents and therefore less prone to making mistakes of this kind. Whatever the case, my feeling is that if mobile operators in developing countries are to capitalise on consumers' lack of access to traditional financial services and institutions, the authorities in those countries would be justified in insisting that the cellcos' services are subject to many of the same regulations imposed on the banking sector. I daresay, however, that incidents like the two mentioned here are relatively rare, so none of these observations are meant as a very serious criticism of mobile financial services in developing countries.

Kenya - and more specifically Safaricom's M-Pesa - stands out as a mobile money success story. How far is it an exceptional story? Can we expect services of this type to face greater obstacles to consumer acceptance and commercial success in other developing countries?

Sarah Rotman of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) could presumably take a view on this, having written in July about the question of whether the success of mobile banking in Kenya can be replicated in neighbouring Tanzania. Rotman notes that unlike the rapid service uptake and quick development of an agent network in Kenya, things have moved much slower for Vodacom’s M-Pesa product in Tanzania. Explanations offered are as follows:

• Geography/demographics: Tanzania is a less densely populated country than Kenya, which is important in light of the idea that the density of an agent network is a key factor in the success of any mobile financial services suite.
• Market and competition: Safaricom in Kenya dominates its market (77.59% market share as of June 2009, according to WCIS), holding its own very well against established competitors and new entrants. Vodacom in Tanzania has just a 35.28% market share (according to WCIS) and is losing ground to the local operation of the Zain group and Millicom International Cellular's Tigo-branded operator.
• Control over agent networks: according to Rotman, it appears that Vodacom Tanzania has less direct control of and influence on its airtime distribution channel than Safaricom. Also, Vodacom works directly with just six airtime wholesalers, compared with 300 for Safaricom. Safaricom’s airtime distribution network was a key element in the rapid development of the M-Pesa agent network.
• Marketing and strategy: Initial Vodacom M-Pesa marketing seems not to have communicated the easily understood 'send money home' message we say in the Safaricom advertisement. As a result, writes Rotman, customers were unsure of what the product offered them and if it was really geared at the average Tanzanian.
  

While there are plenty of reasons to be bullish about the success prospects of mobile money services offered by cellcos to unbanked people in developing countries, then, it seems this enthusiasm should perhaps be tempered by an awareness of possible competitive threats from operator-neutral solutions and an understanding that a one-size-fits-all approach might not work effectively across a multi-country footprint.

Cellco-branded mobile banking to thrive without challenge?

Zain Africa Speculation Watch: Episode 6

For an entity supposedly up for sale and coveted by a wide variety of interested parties, Zain's African unit has certainly been very busy creating new partnerships and gaining publicity for its various activities.

One example of this, brought to my attention by TelecomPaper this week, is the operator's cooperation with Western Union, whereby the two organisations will work together to deliver mobile money transfer services in countries in Africa and the Middle East through Zain's new Zap platform. The service enables Zain subscribers to manage their bank accounts, top up mobile airtime (and transfer airtime to other subscribers), pay utility bills, pay for goods in retail outlets, and transfer money to friends and family.

The opportunity around providing financial services to the unbanked in Africa and in developing countries worldwide is a certainly a rich one. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, GSM Association CEO Rob Conway observed that "there are over one billion people in emerging markets today who don’t have a bank account but do have a mobile phone." Conway feels that mobile operators "are perfectly placed to bring mobile financial services to this largely untapped consumer base" and that "mobile money for the unbanked has the potential to become a USD 5 billion market opportunity over the next three years."

Conway was speaking during an announcement made jointly with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provided a USD 12.5 million grant to the Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) programme, the aim of which is to "encourage the expansion of reliable, affordable mobile financial services to the unbanked."

With Rob Conway having set out the scale of the opportunity for MNOs, the Foundation's Bob Christen was keen to stress the humanitarian benefits, noting that "technology like mobile phones is making it possible to bring low-cost, high-quality financial services to millions of people in the developing world so they can manage life’s risks and build financial security."

Mobile financial services then, should surely be a vital component of the strategy of any telecoms group whose operations are, in large part, in developing countries - a nice revenue opportunity plus wonderful CSR benefits around poverty alleviation.

Setting up services of this kind, however, can be challenging. The last time I heard this discussed at a conference (East Africa Com in Kenya this April), delegates were asking questions about regulatory complexity and about to what degree securing the necessary participation of established financial institutions was going smoothly.

Bearing this in mind, it is perhaps worth noting that while Zain's announced partnership with Western Union sounds exciting, much of the text refers to this being a work in progress - not yet fully operational and subject to regulatory clearance in countries worldwide.

This leads me to wonder whether it would be sensible to dedicate considerable efforts to this venture if up to sixteen of the operations in which the service will work are really to be sold in the near future.

Another initiative possibly set to do wonders for Zain's image as an organisation committed to improving lives in Africa was announced only days ago. Dubbed "Weather Info for All", this involves Zain, Ericsson, the Global Humanitarian Forum and the World Meteorological Organization. The aim is to "radically improve Africa’s weather monitoring network in the face of the growing impact of climate change," which is said to be responsible for some 300,000 deaths worldwide each year and over USD 100 billion of economic losses, mainly because of shocks to health and agricultural productivity. As the Weather Info for All announcement indicates, "Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for close to a quarter of these losses, and is the region at the most immediate risk of droughts and floods."

Africa suffers not only from the effects of these adverse weather conditions, but also from a dearth of reliable information about when and where disaster is likely to strike. This is due to the continent having a weather monitoring network eight times below the WMO minimum recommended standard, and less than 200 weather stations that meet WMO observation requirements, compared to several thousand each in Europe, North America, and parts of Asia.

The Weather Info for All initiative is aimed at adding 5000 weather stations across Africa. Zain has got the ball rolling by providing access to tower sites in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

Mobile network infrastructure provides an unrivaled wealth of support for weather stations - connectivity, power supply and security.

Ericsson, meanwhile, will develop mobile applications to help communicate weather information via mobile phones to the vulnerable communities whose lives can be wrecked by adverse conditions.

I know less about the levels of investment and commitment required of Zain with regard to the Weather for All Initiative than I do about the amount of hard work needed to roll out mobile financial services for the unbanked. Both initiatives, however, have in common a sense of being long term endeavours. Again, I ask whether all of this activity might suggest that the sale of Zain's African operations is rather unlikely.

Zain Africa Speculation Watch: Episode 6