Sunil Mittal, chairman and MD of Bharti Airtel said that India and Africa need a $50 tablet in order to spur adoption of mobile technologies. Speaking at a conference session at MWC, Mittal called on the industry to focus on bringing the cost of smartphones and tablets down to those of feature phones.
India-based Bharti Airtel, the new owner of Zain’s African assets has begun the re-branding process across the 16 operations in the region.
Indian operator Bharti Airtel has selected Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks to deploy HSPA networks in the 13 regions where Airtel has licenses. Seven telecom regions have been awarded to Ericsson and three each to Huawei and Nokia Siemens. The financial value of the contracts have not been disclosed.
Information technology giant IBM made its presence known in the African telecoms market on Friday, having scored a deal with Bharti Airtel to manage the carrier’s technology and services across 16 countries and around 72 million users.
Egyptian carrier Orascom, run by billionaire businessman Naguib Sawiris, said this week that it has called off discussions with regional powerhouse MTN.
Distribution is one of the most important and yet overlooked factors determining success or failure in the African mobile market.
It is inevitable that the African market will go through a period of consolidation. Governments have distributed new mobile licenses liberally and profited as a result. So too have the consumers in most markets. Competition has led to a greater choice of provider and lower pricing, although not necessarily high quality.
Mobile operators in Africa are fortunate. Unlike in some of the world’s more developed markets, trust and familiarity are associated with many operators. The very fact that in many cases the mobile handset has empowered individuals means that mobile consumers often have a great affinity with the mobile operator brand.
Globally the prospects for WiMAX may have dimmed somewhat in the past couple of years, partly as a result of the strong growth of HSPA, which is often seen as a rival to WiMAX, and partly as a result of a lost appetite for network spending. But Africa still offers WiMAX technology a home.
There is substantial opportunity for growth in mobile data services in Africa. Demand for data services is great and the arrival of new undersea cables should remove some of the bottleneck created by Africa’s lack of international connectivity. The fact is that this demand will be met mainly by wireless rather than wireline connections.
A step in the right direction but does it go far enough?
Sharing an allowance among family members is one ...
I agree with Dan about this being a excellent read, and that QNX is not well known but sooner or ...
Excellent read with some actual facts compared to the hack journalist/bloggers on the interest. Many don't understand what QNX ...
The main issue with Telenor is that whether they made underhand payments to ge the licenses. If they did, then ...
Over The Top providers have become the staple wildcard in almost any sector set on a collision path with mobile. By and large they are very good at what they do: connecting a user with their chosen content or service by whatever means available.
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