Vodafone to Expand Turkey Network

Vodafone Turkey, a division of Vodafone Group plc has reportedly signed a 15-year deal worth a $61.5 million with state power transmission company – Teias – for providing fiber network. Per the deal, Vodafone will expand its fiber network by two-and-half times to 16,000 kilometers (9,941 miles) by adding lines from Teias.

According to a Bloomberg report, Vodafone Turkey will invest approximately 300 million liras in the infrastructure. We believe that such growth plans in regions like Turkey enable the company foster its business in the European continent.  

The company expects the deal to remain accretive to its infrastructural development including expansion of the fiber lines of Vodafone’s global network to 1 million kilometers. Further, it expects the deal to foster 4G deployment in the country. Currently, the biggest competitor to the company is expected to be Turk Telecom, the largest telecom company in Turkey that boasts fiber deployments of 74,000 kilometers. Further, Vodafone Group expects to continue fiber expansion in other countries like Iran, Syria, Georgia, Iraq, India.  

Besides infrastructural developments, we believe Vodafone’s future growth hinges on key drivers like increasing mobile data services, growth in enterprise markets through converged fixed and mobile services (Vodafone One Net), new pricing plans such as Vodafone Red, growth in emerging markets including Eastern Europe, India and Africa, growth in machine-to-machine, near-field communications and as well as maintaining liquid investment in quality networks.

source: www.zacks.com

Ethio telecom moves to next phase of expansion

Ethio telecom reports that it has concluded the task of telecoms vendor allocation and is now proceeding to implement its network expansion project to realise the Government's Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) in telecom sector.

This follows ethio telecom’s signing of a USD 1.6 billion expansion project contract with two Chinese companies: Huawei and ZTE, to upgrade and expand its networks.

The expansion project includes:

• Mobile service core networks
• Transmission and fiber optics capacity increase and utilizing of  latest technology
• Radio access network
• Core network as well as tasks of power supply and environment.
• Fixed line next generation network 
• Internet Protocol backhual 

In its second and information system lot the following activities are incorporated:

• IP (internet) service
• Customer Billing System
• Customer relations management system
• Next generation Call Centre
• Security Operation Centre
• Telecom Fraud Management 
• Video Surveillance
• Operation Support Centre
• Multi value added services.

source: www.biztechafrica.com

Season's Greetings From Balancing Act's News Update

The pace of change in the telecoms and internet sectors in Africa in 2013 has seemed to accelerate. The established and accepted ways of doing things are being challenged on all sides by both global trends and by things that are particular to Africa.

Infrastructure plans continue to fall into place. Liquid Telecom looks close to realizing the imperial fantasy of Rhodes by having a fibre route from the Cape to Cairo. Google has built a metronet in Kampala as a way of accelerating market development and looks set to roll out more. Somalia will shortly be connected to international fibre. Fibre to the home or whatever implementations are growing in number: Telkom South Africa has graciously signaled it will join the party, late as ever. Soon as one senior executive told us, the experience for corporate customers in most African capitals will be almost the same as in Europe of the USA. In the meantime, vandalism and power cuts bedevil the progress made.

There is a very real danger that as the digital divide begins to be closed that it will turn into a power divide. There are many efforts at the level of the base station and small-scale local delivery but none of the policy dynamism that has driven the telecoms and Internet sectors in the best performing countries. Many Governments seem to have a rhetoric about joining the Information Society but lack the political will to solve the energy requirements to deliver it. A recent workshop of 42 African countries convened by the African Development Bank for an initiative called Sustainable Energy for All in Africa may be a good thing but we want to see what it's actually going to deliver on the ground.

source: www.allafrica.com

After seizing equipment, Ethiopia goes ahead with Huawei deal

Despite the incident, Huawei has been picked by Ethio Telecom, a state-owned telecom company, to roll out a high-speed 4G network across the country's capital, Addis Ababa, as part of a $1.6 billion deal signed earlier this year with Huawei Technologies and ZTE.

In October this year, Ethiopian tax authority ERCA said it would confiscate the equipment and slap the company with a tax avoidance charge, after the equipment had been held in a warehouse for almost a year. The equipment was imported into the country toward the end of 2012 after Ethio Telecom made known plans to expand its network in the East African country.

Ethio Telecom is the sole telecommunication services provider in Ethiopia and the only operator in the East Africa region that is still under tight state control. The Ethiopian government has refused to open up its telecom sector to private investors.

According to a Ethiopian government official, Ethiopia and China became involved in diplomatic talks over seizure of the equipment. The two countries are said to have agreed that it was important to maintain good bilateral relations by allowing Huawei to take back the equipment.

However, the Chinese company has also been ordered by ERCA to pay five percent of the total tax due on the equipment as well as warehouse charges incurred over the past one year.

"We had planned to slap the company with tax avoidance charge and confiscate the equipment. But the two countries got involved in the issue and it was agreed that it was important to maintain cordial bilateral relations," an ERCA source said on condition of anonymity. He said China has been a major funder of several ICT projects in Ethiopia, including the $1.5 billion Millennium project aimed at creating a fiber-optic network across the country.

source: www.pcadvisor.co

Nigeria launches local content guidelines

Nigeria’s Minister of Communication Technology has unveiled new local content guidelines for the Nigerian ICT sector.

In a move aimed at increasing the scale and scope of the domestic ICT market and facilitate its growth, Minister Omobola Johnson announced the new guidelines at the eNigeria 2013 conference.

Johnson said that with the presentation of the Nigerian Content guidelines, Nigeria had reached a significant milestone in its journey to the target of 50% local content in the ICT industry.

She said the new guidelines would enable the local ICT industry to contribute meaningfully towards the achievement of national development targets; and would stimulate and increase the production, sales, consumption of high quality information technology products and services developed by indigenous companies that serve the needs of the local and global market

source: www.biztechafrica.com

GVG-SGS stages workshop for West African telecoms regulators and fiscal authorities

Global Voice Group (GVG) reports that the first regional workshop on new telecoms regulation tools and electronic  fiscal solutions for West African telecoms regulators and tax administrations, staged in Abidjan, was a great success. The event was a joint initiative of GVG and Société Générale de Surveillance (SGS).

The organisers said the event attracted representatives from the Telecoms Regulatory Agencies and Tax Administrations of Ivory Coast, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Togo.

For this first workshop of its kind in West Africa, GVG and SGS decided to invite both telecoms regulatory agencies and tax administrations in order to gain a deeper understanding of their common challenges, including control and protection of the telecoms sector's revenue. Issues more specific to each authority were also addressed in details, such as quality of service monitoring tools, telecommunications fraud management, new regulatory tools in the context of IP convergence, and new electronic fiscal systems.

Many of the technological tools presented by GVG and SGS were also demonstrated in order to allow participants to appreciate their potential and effectiveness.

According to M. François Dugué, Senior VP at GVG and one of the workshop's principal organizers and presenters: "Telecommunications are a key growth sector in Africa, strong in some respects and vulnerable in some others, particularly in the context of IP convergence. These workshops give us a great opportunity to take stock of the latest improvements in terms of governance technologies. GVG is an active participant to the ITU's Study Groups and our company also sponsors major events such as the African Telecom People.

source: www.biztechafrica.com

Rocket Internet Partners With African Telecom Operator MTN

MTN Group and Rocket Internet announced that they have formed a new joint venture to invest in startups in the Middle East, with a focus on e-commerce. The two companies will each hold a 50% stake in Middle East Internet Holding (MEIH).

The announcement follows another partnership, concluded earlier this week, between MTN, Rocket Internet and Millicom International Cellular, to develop startups in Africa through Africa Internet Holding (AIH). MTN expects to pour 300 million euro (about USD$400 million) into AIH and MEIH, subject to regulatory approval, by the first and second quarter of 2014, respectively.

Based in Johannesburg, MTN is one of Africa’s largest telecom operators. Rocket Internet can potentially leverage MTN’s footprint as it seeks to tap into the continent’s fastest growing Internet markets, including Kenya and Nigeria.

Its agreement with MTN follows several other key partnerships cemented by Rocket Internet. For example, earlier this month Rocket Internet and U.K. retail giant Tesco, the world’s second-largest retailer by revenues after Wal-mart, announced a strategic investment partnership that began with a $250 million lead investment in Lazada. The online marketplace, in which Rocket Internet has invested $486 million so far, operates in Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

source: www.techcrunch.com