WCA November 2014

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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2014
Telecomnews
28Tbit/s Southeast Asia-Japan cable
(SJC), which went operational in
June 2013. That, too, is a 6-fibre-pair
system. (“Google in ‘FASTER’ Subsea
Cable Consortium,” 1st August)
To achieve cost efficiencies
African mobile operators are
offloading tower assets in the
tens of thousands
According to the Nigerian daily
Leadership, telecom operators
such as MTN, Bharti Airtel, Orange,
Vodacom, and Egypt’s MobiNil are
seeking to sell their mobile tower
networks in Africa in an effort
to reduce the burden of costly
infrastructure in the region. Citing
data from tower builder IHS Holding
Ltd, reporter Chima Akwaja wrote
that, in Africa, towers with their
associated infrastructure can account
for more than 60 per cent of the
expense of building a mobile network.
(“Dwindling Margins Push Telcos To
Sell Telecoms Towers,” 17th August)
Among examples given of the
divestment trend, MTN Group is on
the verge of selling towers valued
at $1 billion in Nigeria, and Bharti
Airtel Africa is selling some 15,000 of
its towers across 17 countries for
$2 billion-$2.5 billion. Orange, the
largest phone company in France,
is looking to dispose of towers in
sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt; and
a shortlist of three bidders has been
drawn up for MobiNil’s 2,500 to 3,000
Egyptian towers.
Meanwhile, another operator in which
Orange owns a stake, Sonatel, is
reported progressing with the sale of
3,000 towers across Senegal, Mali,
Guinea Bissau, and Guinea Conakry.
South Africa’s Vodacom has, to date,
sold 1,149 mobile network towers
in Tanzania to Helios Towers Africa.
Bharti’s sale is seen as likely to result
in a division of the towers among
multiple buyers.
Again as reported in Leadership,
IHS, American Tower Corp (AMT),
and units of Helios Towers and Eaton
Towers Ltd are bidding to acquire
the MTN and Bharti assets. These
companies, backed by cash from
interested parties including the
American investor George Soros
and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, have
bought thousands of towers from
carriers in Africa over the past two
years.
Elsewhere in telecom . . .
Ø As reported by TeleGeography
(5th August), according to
the Internet monitoring firm
Renesys, the 28.6-mile Kerch
Strait cable – which provides a
telecommunications link between
Russia and the newly annexed
Crimean peninsula – is up and
running, with Crimean Internet
service providers (ISPs) having
sent first traffic over the newly
constructed fibre link on 24th July.
The cable, believed to have
a capacity of 110Gbps, cost
around $25.1 million to deploy.
Services are said to be offered via
state-backed Rostelecom’s local
agent Miranda Media.
In related news, also from
TeleGeography, a televised con-
ference between Russia’s prime
minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and its
communications and media minister,
Nikolai Nikiforov, broke the news
that Russia’s K-Telecom switched
on its cellular network in Crimea on
4th August. K-Telecom is thought to
be wholly owned by Russia’s Mobile
TeleSystems (MTS), which previously
offered services in Crimea via
its MTS-Ukraine unit.
TeleGeography had earlier reported
that MTS-Ukraine ceased retail
activities in the disputed peninsula
on 30 th June, with Russian SIM cards
distributed as a substitute.
Ø As noted by Sue Marek of
FierceWireless, making an
accurate global count of LTE-A
networks is difficult because
LTE Advanced consists of many
different components – from
carrier aggregation to HetNets
to coordinated multipoint and
more. Because of these different
elements, not all operators are
likely to deploy LTE Advanced
in the same way. Nevertheless,
Ms Marek reported (8th July), 4G
Americas at midyear expected
there to be about 40 networks
worldwide using some form of LTE
Advanced by the end of 2014.
In the USA, AT&T was the only
operator to have commercially
deployed LTE Advanced. In
March the company said it was
using carrier aggregation for its
700 MHz and AWS spectrum in
Chicago and some other markets.
But Verizon Wireless and Sprint
also were on the LTE Advanced
path, with plans to deploy carrier
aggregation late in the year.
Although it is interesting to track
operator deployments of LTE
Advanced, wrote Ms Marek,
experts say that the move from
LTE to LTE Advanced will not
be a huge upgrade over LTE:
they expect instead more of an
evolutionary step that will provide
improved speed and better
network capacity.
Ø The California State Assembly
has passed a bill requiring that,
as of July 2015, all smartphones
sold in the state be pre-equipped
with theft deterrent technology.
If enacted, California will be
the second state in the USA –
after Minnesota – to mandate
so-called ‘kill switch’ software on
smartphones. The Minnesota law
was enacted in May.
As noted by Henry Kenyon of
FierceMobile (13th August), State
Senator Mark Leno, a co-sponsor
of the bill, cited data showing that
smartphone crime doubled across
the USA in 2013 – with about
3.1 million devices stolen, up
from 1.6 million in 2012. In San
Francisco, Mr Leno’s office
reported, more than 65 per cent
of robberies involved the theft of
a mobile device.
Ø According to a study of mobile
phone usage in the USA by the
remarketing site SeeWhy, roughly
22.2 per cent of men completed
purchases on their phones in
2013, compared to 18.2 per cent
of women. Some 20.4 per cent
of men made purchases using a
tablet, compared with 16.9 per
cent of women.
The SeeWhy research showed
men to be more likely than
women to abandon a purchase
out of frustration with such
mobile shopping problems as
slow Internet, small screens,
and navigation issues. Although
women account for most
household spending in the
USA, men do a fair amount of
online spending. Data from a BI
Intelligence report indicates that
57 per cent of women and 52 per
cent of men in the USA made an
online purchase in 2013.