WCA November 2013

Owned in part by Emirates Telecommunications Corp, Pakistan Telecommunication itself owns mobile service provider Ufone, which competes with Pakistan Mobile Communications Ltd’s Mobilink, Telenor ASA’s local subsidiary, and a unit of China Mobile Ltd. Noting that his company is also conducting a due diligence of Warid Telecom Ltd, a smaller competitor, Mr Irshaid said: “I foresee consolidation as a natural phenomenon.” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who won office in May, has increased tax levies on Pakistan’s telecommunications industry. He has agreed to a loan with the International Monetary Fund and is aiming for national economic expansion of 4.4 per cent in the fiscal year that began 1 st July, up from an estimated 3.6 per cent in the year ended 30 th June. ✆ ✆ As prospective competitors Ooredoo (previously Qatar Telecom) and Norway’s Telenor move closer to launching services in Myanmar, the national telecom ministry Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) said it is in talks with international providers including France Télécom to help with an expansion. “We are now discussing a joint venture agreement with a foreign giant,” U Aung Maw, the managing director of MPT, told the Myanmar Times on 15 th September on the sidelines of the Myanmar Connect 2013 conference in Nay Pyi Taw. While he declined to name the companies, Mr U said that MPT, which is to become a corporation separate from the ministry, had held discussions with firms from France, Singapore, Japan, and other Western countries. A bidding process had earlier selected Telenor and Ooredoo as winners of two mobile licences, with a consortium of France Télécom and a Japanese firm finishing third. Domestic entities MPT and Yatanarpon Teleport (YTP) also possess licenses, while MPT has the sole existing mobile infrastructure and customer base in Myanmar.

✆ ✆ The Wall Street Journal reported on 13 th September that Britain’s Vodafone Group had achieved its aim of acquiring the German Internet and cable company Kabel Deutschland AG, despite suggestions that some share- holders would hold out for a higher price. The day before, Vodafone said that more than 75 per cent of Kabel’s shareholders had agreed to take its $10 billion offer for Germany’s largest cable company. The deal is considered a coup for Vodafone, which wants to use Kabel’s fixed-line network to push beyond mobile in Europe’s largest economy. Buying Kabel allows the UK-based operator to offer higher-speed broadband Internet services and means it will no longer have to pay fees to Deutsche Telekom AG for use of its network. Reporters Eyk Henning and Peter Evans wrote that the acquisition of Kabel could be a curtain-raiser for more deals in Europe by the British telecom company. Two weeks earlier, Vodafone had agreed to sell its 45 per cent stake in Verizon Wireless, of the US, for about $130 billion – a move that would give it ‘more firepower to carry out its European strategy.’ Vodafone executives have said they plan to invest in the Italian market and have also expressed interest in Spain. Analysts have said that the Verizon deal would also likely reduce the chances of Vodafone, cashed-up after the US sale, itself becoming a takeover target. ✆ ✆ Pakistan Telecommunication Co, the country’s biggest fixed-line phone-service provider, said it expects excellent second-half sales growth on the strength of its broadband business. Net income rose 15 per cent to $76 million in the January-June period, while sales climbed 17 per cent to $634 million, according to calculations based on data compiled by Bloomberg Businessweek . In a 20 th August interview in Islamabad, the Pakistani carrier’s CEO, Walid Irshaid, told Bloomberg ’s Augustine Anthony: “We will be doing equally well, if not better” in the second half.

He wrote on lightreading.com : “Huawei expects 5G to require a thousand times more spectrum than is currently made available for wireless communications, much of it at extremely high frequencies.” Currently the highest bands allocated to wireless are 3.5GHz for LTE TDD and WiMax, although WiMax can operate in a fixed wireless deployment at 66GHz. Elsewhere in telecom . . . ✆ ✆ In other news of Huawei, the company said it doubled its investment in research and development in Europe between 2010 and 2013, and that it expects to double it again over the next five years. Mike Dano, of FierceWireless (13 th September), commented that the ‘notable’ commitment is indicative of the vendor’s hopes to solidify its position both in Europe and in the broader global market. Com Hem, Sweden’s largest cable multi-system operator (MSO), is stretching its network with the rollout of a broadband tier that maxes out at 500Mbps downstream and 50Mbps in the upstream. Available to over a million house- holds for $138.03 per month, the new tier strengthens Com Hem’s vis-à-vis competitors, such as Telenor and TeliaSonera, in the highly penetrated Swedish high-speed Internet market. On 21 st August, technology editor Jeff Baumgartner of Multichannel News (New York) observed that the Com Hem announcement provides ‘some real-world proof’ of the speeds that today’s DOCSIS 3.0 platform can provide. And, he wrote: “It does fit snugly with the European Commission’s Digital Agenda, which calls on the region’s ISPs to offer download broadband speeds of at least 30 Mbps to all citizens by 2020.” Also by that year, at least 50 per cent of European households are intended to be subscribing to Internet tiers providing speeds of at least 100Mbps.

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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2013