Africa Telecom articles from November 2001

Africa Telecom archives from November 2001

Middle East and Africa 2.5/3G Market Share 2000-2007.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 1, 2001... Middle East and Africa 2.5/3G Market Share 2000-2007 Millions of subscribers 2000 15 2001 18 2002 22.5 2003 25.5 2004 29.5 2005 32.5 2006 36...

ITU Africa Show Spotlights Developing Market. (Top Stories).
November 1, 2001... A new scramble is happening in Africa as global telecom executives gathered at a trade show in Johannesburg, South Africa to stake their claim to the final telecom frontier. Organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Telecom...

Pre-Paid Services to Drive African Mobile Growth. (Top Stories).
November 1, 2001... Pre-paid mobile phone connections will remain the key driver of Africa's dramatic cellular phone growth. "Africa's future telecommunications will be wireless and pre-paid, competitive and shared," Yoshio Utsumi, head of the International...

Siemens and Orascom Algeria Sign $75 Million Deal. (Algeria).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Orascom Telecom Algeria has signed a $75 million contract with Siemens to install radio and transmission equipment around the capital Algiers. OT Algeria's chief commercial officer Michel Hebert said the deal, signed in Cairo, was part of...

Orbicom Launches Online Payment Service. (Ghana).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Orbicom, a South African satellite broadcaster, part of mobile group M-Cell, has launched an online, card-based payment service in Ghana. "The service involves the construction of a banking switch and the creation of a wireless communication...

KenCell Expands Its Roaming Service Network. (Kenya).
November 1, 2001... Kencell Communications has added 16 new international roaming partners to its Yes! Roaming Service. The CEO, Philippe Vandebrouck, said the firm took the decision to extend the service in recognition of the need for internationally travelling...

Telkom Unveils New Value-Added Services. (Kenya).
November 1, 2001... Telkom Kenya rolled out a US$ 5.6 million platform that enables it to offer a range of new services. The roll-out of the Intelligent Network Platform (a project that has been in the works for the last two years and makes Kenya the first country...

Safaricom Expands Contract with interWAVE to Deliver Additional Portable GSM Networks. (Kenya).
November 1, 2001... interWAVE Communications, a pioneer in compact wireless voice communications systems and broadband wireless data networks, announced additional orders from Safaricom, a mobile telephony provider. Safaricom will use interWAVE's containerized GSM...

ISP-K Voted ISP of the Year by Computer Society. (Kenya).
November 1, 2001... ISP-Kenya has been voted ISP of the year in a national assessment conducted by the Computer Society of Kenya. The results, which rated ISP-Kenya at 79.5 percent and were announced on November 6, 2001, mean that ISP-Kenya has won the award for...

The Sale of Nitel Postponed. (Nigeria).
November 1, 2001... Nigeria postponed at the last minute the signing of a deal to sell a majority interest in Nitel, a state telecoms company, for $1.317 billion to a consortium allied with a unit of Portugal Telecom. The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE)...

Cell C Launches Third Mobile Service. (South Africa).
November 1, 2001... Cell C launched South Africa's third mobile phone operation, saying it expected 800,000 users in the first year. The group, which will need as much as $650 million in financing over seven years, announced details of its operation 21 weeks after...

Parliament Accepts Telecoms Bill. (South Africa).
November 1, 2001... The South African parliament adopted a controversial Telecommunications Amendment Bill, setting the stage for the licensing next year of a second fixed-line operator to rival state-owned Telkom. The bill also clears the way for the listing of...

Motorola Demonstrates GPRS. (South Africa).
November 1, 2001... Motorola demonstrated a functional GPRS network connecting its new GPRS-ready phones to the Vodacom GPRS test network at 115 Kbps -- about twice the speed of a landline modem connection. The telecoms, broadband, two-way radio and chip...

DSTV to Launch Interactive TV. (South Africa).
November 1, 2001... Multichoice Africa has unveiled its plans for the introduction of interactive TV. Dubbed iTV for "interactive television," the first services will be delivered to DSTV subscribers in early 2002. While traditional TV watching is a one-way...

Siemens to Roll Out Fiber Optic Network Infrastructure. (South Africa).
November 1, 2001... Eskom Enterprises, has finalized a US$ 41.93 million contract with Siemens Information and Communications Group for the roll-out of fiber optic network infrastructure in preparation for the deregulation of the fixed telecommunications industry...

South Africa Approves Mobile Interconnect Deal. (South Africa).
November 1, 2001... Telkom said it would implement a new interconnection deal with mobile operators, which would see it earning more for routing cellphone calls. Telkom has received regulatory approval for the deal with MTN, Vodacom and new operator Cell C, which...

South Africa Ready to List Telkom. (South Africa).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... South Africa is "technically ready" to list part of Telkom this fiscal year, but market conditions would decide the exact timing of the privatization move. Sivi Gounden, director general of the Department of Public Enterprises, said that the...

Vodacom Reports Boom in Text Messaging. (South Africa).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Cell phone operator Vodacom said it's handling 110 million text messages on its network a month, up from 55 million a month last year. Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig said that the takeoff in short messaging services (SMS) had been driven by...

Telkom Launches IP VPNs. (South Africa).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Telkom has launched two new Internet protocol (IP)-based virtual private network (VPN) services which it describes as "very cost-effective." The ViP Dial service allows remote access to a central corporate location, using IP with secure...

AF Group to Develop Tanzania's Telecom Sector. (Tanzania).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... The AF Group has signed a contract with the Tanzania Telecommunications Commission (TCC) to support TCC's capacity development ambitions. The project is funded by Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. This activity...

Tunisia Relaunches GSM Licence Tender. (Tunisia).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Tunisia restarted abandoned attempts to sell a second GSM mobile phone license, setting January as the closing date and relaxing some requirements in an effort to attract more bidders. The ministry dropped the tender on July 27 because it was...

MTN Wants Airtime Tax Cut. (Uganda).(MTN Uganda)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... MTN Uganda, a telecommunications provider, has petitioned the government to cut mobile phone airtime from seven percent to four percent. The company said the tax cut would enable them expand their network and make their services affordable to...

UUNET Zambia Opens Its Doors. (Zambia).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... UUNET has launched its new operation in Lusaka. The launching of UUNET Zambia is expected to take Internet access in Zambia to new levels. It will bring a new range of products and services directed at the corporate business user, and offer...

Cellphone Firms Block Fourth License Bids. (Zambia).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Zambia's two private mobile phone operators and a former government minister have obtained a court injunction blocking the government from licensing a fourth operator. Telecel, Celtel, and civil activist and businessman Andrew Kashita argued...

ITXC Reports Massive Increase in African Business. (Regional).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... ITXC, an international IP Telephony wholesaler, has seen a 1,111 percent increase in voice traffic to and from Africa in the past year. The figure, which covers the period between the third quarter of 2000 and the third quarter of 2001, largely...

3G in Africa Worth $7 Billion by 2010. (Business).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... The UMTS Forum has released its global study of the third-generation cellular market, which holds a positive outlook for 3G in Africa. According to the report, "The UMTS Third Generation Market-Phase Structuring the Service Revenue...

Africa's Telecoms Market to Grow Phenomenally Despite Global Telecoms Market Downturn. (Business).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... The African telecoms market can expect to grow in 2002 at a similar rate as in the past couple of years, i.e. mobile markets will grow in excess of 35 percent, while fixed-line is estimated to grow at 25 percent, BMI-T Africa research has said....

I-Fusion Selected as Official Network Provider for ITU Telecom Africa 2001. (Business).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) selected I-Fusion to provide its entire network for the ITU Telecom Africa 2001 event. I-Fusion was responsible for the design, implementation, operation and support of the LAN/WAN network, and...

3G Cellular May Attract 65 Million African Users by 2010. (Business).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Speakers at the ITU Telecom Africa 2001 conference presented the business case for third-generation (3G) cellular networks. Speakers highlighted the need for mobile data access using secure, always on Internet Protocol (IP) delivering...

3G Will Be Slow to Reach Mobile-Mad Africa. (Market Intelligence).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Africa has rapidly embraced mobile technology but is likely to steer clear of the next generation of services for now after the bruising experience of European telecoms groups, but with the number of mobile-phone users in Africa increasing...

African Connectivity Drive to Boost E-commerce. (Market Intelligence).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... "Connecting Africa is an issue that demanded the priority attention of all African carriers and is a prerequisite for the successful introduction of e-commerce on the continent," Nombulelo Moholi, deputy vice president of Telkom sales and...

Africa to Pursue Rascom System. (Market Intelligence).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Africa still plans to send up its own dedicated satellite after long delays. "The implementation of the Rascom system is in full gear," Regional African Satellite Communications Organisation (Rascom) CEO Gounde Desire Abadja said. Rascom's...

Many Paths to Connecting Africa. (Market Intelligence).
November 1, 2001... Wiring the African continent for the new economy came under the spotlight with representatives from both sides of the terrestrial and satellite debate presenting their case at the ITU Telecom Africa summit. Sindiso Ngwenya, assistant...

ITU Solicits Cheaper Telephone Access in Africa. (Market Intelligence).
November 1, 2001... The International Telecommunications Union, ITU, has urged mobile and fixed line telephone operators in Africa to look for ways of reducing the cost of their service in order to make it affordable to the mass public. Speaking at Telecom...

Africa's Data on the Increase. (Market Intelligence).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Intelsat, a satellite communications company, said that Africa's data traffic is expected to overtake voice on its networks by 2005. According to Flavien Bachabi, Intelsat regional vice president of Africa sales and marketing, his geostationary...

ITU Expresses Positive Sentiments about Africa. (Market Intelligence).
November 1, 2001... The International Telecommunications Union opened its forum and exhibition for the Dark Continent on a positive note, saying Africa had achieved much since the last such event in 1998, with enormous growth in the penetration of...