Tunisiana Sold To Qtel, Princesse Holding For $1.2 Billion

Orascom Telecom has sold the other half of Tunisiana to Wataniya, Qatar Telecom’s Kuwaiti unit; for a price of $1.2 billion. Wataniya, which already owned 50% of Tunisiana, bought the remaining stake in a consortium led by Princesse Holding of Tunisia, Qtel said in a statement on Monday: “The acquisition is in line with the Qtel Group’s vision … and with our strategy of active portfolio development, through which we may seek to increase our ownership in well performing assets, with further growth potential… We are confident that with the support and active participation of Princesse Holding, we will be able to take Tunisiana to the next stage of its development”, Qtel’s Chairman Sheikh Abdullah al-Thani said in the statement.

Wataniya expects to close the deal in early January 2011 and will finance its portion through a mixture of cash and debt.

Zamtel To Increase Its Internet Services

Zamtel has invested 600 billion kwacha in an effort to expand its reach and increase its internet services. Mr. Amon Jere, CEO, said his company would like to see more Zambians have access to internet at affordable prices and in order to achieve this goal, Zamtel will lay over a fibre optic cable across Zambia in the next two years in order to upgrade the network. In addition, Zamtel has also signed an agreement with Botswana Telecommunications Corp to connect Zambia within four months to a fibre optic cable already linked to an undersea cable, Mr. Jere said.

Zamtel has revealed that its subscriber base has increased by 30% since the take over of the operator by Lap Green.

Mozambique Grants Third Mobile Licence To Vietnam’s Viettel

Mozambique has granted its third mobile phone licence to Movitel, a unit of Viettel that includes consortium of Mozambican investors, out of 22 firms originally bid for the licence. Movitel, which bid $29 million, beat two other bidders: TMM, a unit of Portugal Telecom, and UNI-Telecom a joint venture between Angola’s Unitel SA and Mozambique’s Energy Capital SA.

Isidore Pedro da Silva, Chairman of the National Institute of Communications, said the winning bid was awarded on technical capacity, not only price. Unitel had proposed $33 million, while Portugal Telecom had bid $25 million, he said.

Morocco: Meditel Q310 Profit Up 91%

Meditel, Morocco’s second largest operator has reported results for its third quarter. During the period, net profits jumped 91% to 270 million dirhams compared to the same period last year. Revenue rose 11% to 4.2 billion dirhams boosted by internet and corporate data business segments which grew 77% and 16% respectively. In addition, the operator said its mobile subscriber base increased by 10% to 10.14 million.

Mohamed Elmandjra, CEO, commented on the good results: “Meditel results met our expectations and the all performance indicators reinforce our strategy”.

Zimbabwe’s Econet Wireless Profit Surges 39% in Q310

Econet Wireless has released its results for half year ended August 2010. During the period, profits rose 39% to US$64.2 million after the group spent around $122 million on its network expansion and installed around 401 additional base stations in order to improve its coverage. As a result, the investment contributed to increase mobile penetration from 40% to 52% and attracted about a million new subscribers on Econet’s network during the period under review.

Mr. Tawanda Nyambirai, Econet Chairman, commented on the group’s performance: “The key focus of the business remains the investment in infrastructure to improve quality. The fundamental of the business remain sound and the market still presents significant opportunities”.

Tunisie Telecom to be listed before end-2010

Tunisie Telecom is expected to be listed on the Tunis stock exchange and a European bourse before the end of the year, says Reuters, following a recent interview with Mohamed Bichiou chief executive officer of the Tunis stock exchange.  The European bourse in question was not specified.

The Tunisian state would contribute 10 percent of the company’s shares, while the other 10 percent would come from United Arab Emirates shareholders, Mr. Bichiou added. The operator is majority owned by the state while Dubai’s TECOM Investments and Dubai Investment Group jointly hold 35 percent.

As of June 2010, Tunisie Telecom had 4,879,000 mobile customers, 1,277,000 Fixed subscribers and covered 489,000 Broadband households according to Dataxis Intelligence.

In September, Tunisian Government awarded the company a 3G licence for about $80 million, putting it in direct competition with Orange Tunisie, which was granted the first 3G licence last year.

Nigeria: Nitel Gets a Buyer

The sale of Nitel has been approved by President Goodluck Jonathan according to a statement issued by the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) this week. The approval came after a committee set up to investigate controversial sale in February found out that the “transaction complied with due process”.

The preferred bidder called the New Generation consortium includes China Unicom, Dubai company Minerva and a local Nigerian firm GiCell. The statement says the consortium will be asked to make an initial payment of $750 million in bid security to secure an offer letter for the acquisition of NITEL and M-TEL its mobile subsidiary.

The consortium has been given 10 days to pay the bid security and 60 days to pay the full bid amount, according to the BPE statement.

Omen International, a consortium registered in the British Virgin Islands, is the reserve bidder with a $956 million offer.

According to Dataxis Intelligence, Nigeria has more than 85 million mobile subscribers and a population of around 160 million.

New Pay TV operator launched in Uganda

A new competitor to Multichoice has entered the Ugandan Pay TV market. Dubbed as Star Times DTV, the new channel was officially launched yesterday and is expected to  drop further the cost of Pay TV. Star Times DTV is set to introduce live football channels to step up the competition according to Kevin Chen, Chief Marketing Officer: “Our aim is to make pay-TV affordable to all Ugandans. We now have 30,000 subscribers, but once the numbers shoot up we shall have live football matches”, he said. In addition, Chen confirmed that they would be expanding to Mbarara and Gulu by next year: “We have a commitment with the International Telecommunication Union to ensure that by 2012, Uganda has no analogue system,” he said.

Multichoice, the pioneer of Pay TV in Uganda, is the only pay TV that airs live football. It charges about sh350,000 for the initial installation and $48 (about sh110,000) for monthly subscription while Star Times DTV charges an initial installation fee of sh120,000 and its monthly subscription fee is sh15,000 for 36 channels and shs25,000 for 40 channels. The competition has forced Multichoice to slash its monthly charges nearly by a half for the premier packages from over sh500,000 to about sh290,000.

After the launch of the new channel, Uganda now has five Pay TV channels: Multichoice, Pearl Digital TV, JR Net, Metropo Cable and Star Times DTV.

Star Times DTV is Chinese owned, headquartered in Beijing China and operates in about 10 countries in Africa.

Tunisie Telecom Acquires 3G Phone Licence For $80 Million

Tunisie Telecom has acquired the second 3G licence in the country for about $80 million, which puts it in direct competition with Orange Tunisie that was granted the first 3G licence last year according to a government official who declined to be named. The 3G technology enables users to surf the internet faster and download music and data more easily to handsets.

Tunisie Telecom is majority owned by the state while Dubai’s Telecom Investment and Dubai Investment Group jointly hold 35%.

Orange Tunisie is 49% owned by France Telecom with the rest owned by Tunisian firm Divona.

The third mobile operator is Tunisiana, a joint venture of Egypt’s Orascom Telecom and Kuwait’s Wataniya.

According to Dataxis Intelligence, Tunisia has a population of more than 10.5 million people and mobile penetration of more than 100%.

Yu introduces new mobile internet service on basic phones in Kenya

Essar Telecom Kenya, trading under the Yu brand, has partnered with ForgetMeNot Africa -a mobile phone message optimiser platform company – to enable its subscribers who do not have smart phones or handsets with Internet-enabled technology to end and receive email or chat online.

The new service, dubbed as Peperusha will be provided thanks to ForgetMeNot’s eTxT technology which is a message that can be sent and received seamlessly as an SMS, an email or chat message on any carriers network via SMS.

This move by Yu Kenya a first of its Kind in the country, is definitely set to democratize mobile internet services usage as put it an official from Rapid Communications the local partner of ForgetMeNot Africa.

‘‘The high price of Internet-ready phones has restricted many Kenyans from being able to access the Internet, but we can now provide online messaging services at significantly lower cost via SMS,’’