Gordon Gekko wrote:MTN are already in town via UUNET. I guess with the unified license regime, they probably already have the mobile licenses and will just apply for prefixes. Given that they can piggyback on any other providers infrastructure, Bharti will be of no business value.
Not sure if UUNet opted for a converged licence - very unlikely. What you allude to would be an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) - Like Virgin Mobile in RSA. I am not sure we have such provisions in the market yet to allow this.
Overall, whoever said Zain might double its losses from 7 mil to 14 mil, should also take into account the new (lower) interconnection rates - fine, more traffic went from Zain to SCOM - but with lower interconnection, it may not suffer such huge losses.
While it might not be scientific - I know at least 10 people who have ceased to use their SCOM numbers - totally. Zain may be mum on its new numbers as part of its strategy. To shout it from the hill tops would be to cause some premature and unnecessary political and other interference.
Lets wait and see. I suspect Zain now has over 5 million subscribers and growing.
Whoever said they will be sold off - not likely. Bharti has abt 150 million subscribers in India - enough to subsidise its Africa operations that total abt 40 million subs (end of 2009). In some markets ARPU for them is still pretty high and in those markets they are the dominant operator. In Nigeria they have 15 million subscribers and the #2 operator there.
Look globally and you can see why they can take the fight to Safaricom.