Indian operator group Bharti Airtel has sold a stake in its business to Qatar Foundation Endowment (QFE). The Qatari investment group will acquire five per cent, almost 200 million new shares, of Airtel for $1.26bn.
Qatari consumers can now begin enjoying 4G services, as the country’s incumbent operator Ooredoo announced the launch of its LTE network. Ooredoo’s 4G service will initially be available via mifi and dongle devices, and the operator is currently working on making 4G available on smartphones in Qatar.
With its sights set on capitalising on the growth across the Middle East, Orange Business Services, has announced the launch of an enterprise-focused joint venture in Qatar.
Middle Eastern operator Qatar Telecom (Qtel) said Thursday it has received approval from local regulator the Kuwait Capital Markets Authority to buy what amounts to a 47.5 per cent stake in Kuwait-based telco Wataniya for $2.2bn. The move would give Qtel, which already owns 52.5 per cent of the firm, complete ownership.
The Middle Eastern state of Qatar has bold plans in place to overhaul its communications infrastructure with a massive fibre buildout, as part of the country’s Vision 2030 project which aims to transform the country through investment in advanced technologies into a knowledge-based society.
The oil-rich state of Qatar has confirmed that it will be building a Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) infrastructure that will cover 95 per cent of Qatari homes and 100 per cent of businesses by 2015.
Qtel, one of the two major telecoms providers in Qatar (the other being Vodafone Qatar), has started connecting its customers to the country’s new fibre-based broadband network.
Virgin Mobile’s newly launched operation in the emirate state of Qatar has had its wrists slapped by the regulator along with its local host and network partner, Qtel (Qatar Telecom).
It’s just coming up to six am in Doha airport, Qatar, on Wednesday morning, with this member of the telecoms.com team part way through the trek back to the UK from China, via Qatar and Turkey. So it seems strangely fitting that local carrier Qatar Telecom (Qtel) should pick today to unveil its preparations for the move to LTE.
The prospects for WiMAX seemed to have dimmed somewhat in the past couple of years as a result of the strong growth of HSPA, which is often seen as a rival to WiMAX, and a recession that has reduced the appetite for the spending necessary to build networks.
As the Middle East’s mobile markets mature, and with the impact of the recession still raw, many of the region’s operators are becoming more cost-conscious.
The telecoms industry in the Gulf region is in the throes of change with mobile markets becoming more competitive and saturated. As a result the big players are expanding into Africa and Asia Pacific to continue growing, but there is also a need for more domestic capacity to support growth and home in both the mobile and fixed markets.
Perceptions about the Middle East and North Africa countries’ ability to foster e-commerce are increasingly becoming outdated. The pace of development in the last three years has been truly impressive. Operators across the region are investing large sums in getting high-speed, high-capacity and cost effective telecoms networks into the region and the current infrastructure is much more advanced than perhaps they have been given credit for.
Second placed Omani mobile operator Nawras has been issued a fixed line licence, the company said on Tuesday.
Qatar’s incumbent operator, Qatar Telecom, is under threat from Vodafone, after the UK-based operator won its second licence in the country this week. In addition to the mobile licence Vodafone acquired in Qatar earlier this year, the Big V has also snapped up the right to offer fixed line services and plans to offer both [...]
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