LONDON-The wireless sector in the Middle East is still widely accepted as a vibrant and growing market, with the wireless Internet and several wireless trade shows coming on the scene.
Nearly everyone who attended the GSM Gulf and Middle East Conference, a two-day event held late last year in Bahrain, had little doubt that the sector looks set to continue its growth with the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) at its heart.
“WAP will open the boundless world of the Internet to mobile users, setting the scene to a complete convergence of voice, data and image communication through the mobile TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) mobile networks, including GPRS, and third-generation mobile will hasten voice-data integration and the applications of multimedia,” said Bahrain operator Batelco’s Chief Executive Officer Andrew Hearn in his opening speech.
Operators across the region have experienced rapid uptake of their mobile services, with the advent of prepaid only serving to accelerate the phenomenon. Batelco’s SimSim prepaid option accounts for around 20 percent of the mobile customer base in Bahrain, according to Mohamed Al Hashili, mobile product development manager at Batelco.
For its part, the United Arab Emirates continues to lead the way in the growth of the mobile sector and is widely tipped to be the first country to witness higher mobile subscription than for fixed-line services.
New players
Following continued demand for mobile services in the country, the Turkish government decided to issue a tender for two new GSM licenses originally valued at about US$500 million each in April. A company owned by Telecom Italia and Turkey’s Isbank grabbed the third license for US$2.52 billion, nearly double the second-highest bid. All four consortia vying for the fourth license withdrew from the auction without bidding. A second auction attempt two weeks later produced the same results.
Analysts said Telecom Italia and Isbank made such a high bid to discourage the other participants. The base auction price for the second license was US$2.52 billion, set by the first tender. The government at press time had not yet announced how or if it will move forward with the second license tender.
In addition, the state-run telco, Turk Telekom, is expected to receive a fifth GSM license following its pending partial privatization expected this year.
Not to be outdone, Egypt is also due to see a third GSM operator. The government has announced that an additional network is to be set up once the exclusivity period granted to the current operators, MobiNil and Misrfone, is up in second-quarter 2003.
This positive trend is further evident in the growing number of GSM operators that have appeared on the Middle East scene recently-Celcom in Iran, STE in Syria and Morocco’s Meditelecom, for example.
Meditelecom is a consortium led by the Spanish company Telef
