India’s Communications & IT Minister: summoned to explain falling revenues at BSNL To my mind, the least surprising news item so far this week comes from Mansi Taneja of India’s Business Standard , who reports that state-owned Indian state-owned telco BSNL is likely to exit a consortium that has been aiming to acquire a 46% in pan- MEA mobile group Zain . According to Taneja , MTNL , the other public sector operator party to the consortium, is also likely to exit since it had agreed to follow BSNL ’s lead in the deal

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Unsurprising news of the week

Shaw Communications: joining the opposition to Orascom’s Canadian market entry A recent DevelopingTelecomsWatch article reported on the challenges faced by Orascom Telecom -backed nascent Canadian cellco Globalive Wireless as it seeks to intrude upon what its CEO has described as the “oligopoly” of incumbent players Rogers Wireless , Bell Mobility and Telus . We noted that the Wind-branded operator has fallen foul of foreign ownership despite Orascom Telecom supremo Naguib Sawiris having been, in the words of Terence Corcoran of the National Post , “led..

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Orascom Telecom: continued resistance to Canadian market entry and changes at the top

Naguib Sawiris: planning to shake up Canada’s wireless market DTW’s recent article on international ambitions of India’s two major state-owned telecoms operators mentioned that one opportunity they are considering is the acquisition of a controlling stake in Zamtel , the incumbent fixed-line operator in Zambia. It remains to be seen if this joint bid from BSNL and MTNL will succeed and it does look as though some formidable players are also interested

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Canada’s ‘thirdworldish’ policies to stifle wireless competition?

Johan Terve, Aptilo Networks: good opportunities for WiMAX in emerging markets DevelopingTelecomsWatch was a proud media partner of this year’s iteration of the annual Africa Com conference and exhibition held in Cape Town. The event concluded on Thursday this week, wrapping up two days of discussions and networking among the continent’s telecoms operators and their business partners from the vendor and systems integrator communities. One theme explored in some detail at the conference – via a special breakout session – was the question of to what extent WiMAX is gaining traction in Africa

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Aptilo Networks positive about prospects for WiMAX in developing countries

A number of articles here have wrestled with the question of optimum pricing for mobile operators in emerging markets. Some of these have focused on the case of Millicom International Cellular selling its three Asian operations, having cited, in the case of Cambodia, the challenges of maintaining healthy profitability in the face of the highly aggressive market entry strategies of new entrants. This week a price war fought amongst telcos elsewhere in Asia has cause a slide in the value of their stocks: The lady speaking in this clip contends that the first shots in this Indian tariff war were fired by Aircel (India’s seventh largest cellco by market share) and Tata DoCoMo , the recently-launched GSM proposition from CDMA operator Tata Teleservices , arising out of its strategic alliance with Japanese mobile giant NTT DoCoMo .

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India: cut-price tariffs squeezing margins and causing telecoms stocks to tumble

Central America and the Caribbean: varied telecoms markets When I wrote in late August about the quasi-nationalisation of Belize Telemedia , this was in response to being urged to do so by a Caribbean-based regular reader of this blog. That reader also suggested a number of other stories from his part of the world that I might dig into and discuss here.

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CALA region privatisation, nationalisation and liberalisation: variety is the watchword

Zain Group: all operations up for grabs? Over the (northern hemisphere) summer months, this blog became very preoccupied with whispers about a ‘for sale’ sign supposedly being slapped onto the African assets of Kuwait-headquartered mobile group Zain . So much so that an inelegant title ( Zain Africa Speculation Watch ) was cobbled together for what quickly became a series of articles

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M&A mystery tour: Zain, Tigo Sri Lanka, Vivendi’s foray into Brazil

Vimpelcom’s Beeline brand: next stop Laos Back in late July, global emerging markets mobile group Millicom International Cellular announced that its Asian assets were up for sale. Since then, this blog has tracked other telecoms groups’ interest in these operations. The first confirmed transaction was the sale of Millicom’s majority stake in Cambodian mobile operator Cellcard to another of the existing shareholders, the Royal Group

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Millicom’s Asian sell-off: two down, one to go

Sri Lankans queue to get their hands on Airtel ‘s low price offers earlier this year When Bharti Airtel ‘s Sri Lanka operation Airtel Lanka launched its cut price services in January this year, the new cellco became the fifth operator competing for a share of the country’s mobile market. The number of mobile service providers in the island nation, however, may soon be set to fall back to four.

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Sri Lankan mobile market: one way or another, consolidation looks likely

It’s gratifying to realise that this blog is sometimes read by people within organisations at the centre of the stories covered here. This seems to have been the case with the recent piece on the actions of Belizean Prime Minister Dean Barrow, who has amended his country’s Telecommunications Act, thereby allowing the Government to seize control of the incumbent national telecoms operator Belize Telemedia , with shares to be distributed to domestic investors. A response to this post has been posted in the comments box on this blog, the layout of which does not really enable readers to find comments easily

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Belize Telemedia nationalisation: Hayward Charitable Belize Trust responds