Eighteen months after Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution marked the onset of the Arab Spring, what effect has the upheaval in the region had on the telecoms sector?
Within the past year, four Middle East operators have launched LTE: Etisalat in the UAE; and all three of the mobile operators in Saudi Arabia – STC, Mobily and Zain.
But it is still early days for LTE in the Middle East. Although none of the operators will reveal their LTE subscription numbers, the indications at the LTE MENA conference, which was put on by Informa Telcoms & Media in Dubai on April 29-30, were that the number of LTE subscriptions in the region is still only in the low thousands.
Jayhun Mollazade, CEO of Azqtel, Azerbaijan, is speaking at the LTE MENA conference taking place on the 29th-30th April 2012 at the Westin Mina Seyahi, Dubai. Ahead of the conference Telecoms.com speaks to him about why the company originally launched with WiMAX, but is now is closely eyeing LTE technology.
In the last 48 hours that I have been in Dubai with the purpose of attending the ME Telco event, I am hearing a lot, I must say overloaded on the topic “Mobile Data”. It’s Data, Data, everywhere, a hot topic globally more so in the MENA region, given the proliferation of smart devices, smart networks and a smart subscriber base that is looking for change. I hosted a closed door seminar yesterday wherein my close engagement with the Mobile Operator community has resulted in me sharing the thoughts below.
The Informer spent a few days in Barcelona this week, sniffing around the LTE World Summit. The default setting in the LTE sector is positive and forward- looking but a frank, challenging opening keynote from Orange Spain CTO Eduardo Duato at the event this week spat rather effectively in that soup.
Analysis suggests that the Middle Eastern telecoms industry is actually stronger in terms of credit health, than its European equivalent, despite the impact of the Arab Spring, says Pavle Sabic, Solutions Architect at S&P Capital IQ.
Ahead of the LTE World Summit 2011 we posed a range of questions to a number of our speakers to gain some more insight into the complex world of LTE.
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Record numbers of households across the Middle East and Africa are signing up for pay TV, according to new research from Informa Telecoms & Media.
In 2000 there were just over 2.5 million pay TV subscribers across the MENA region. By the end of last year that total had more than trebled to 9.2 million and Informa’s research shows it is heading for 9.6 million by the end of 2011 and will pass the 10 million mark next year.