BUCHAREST, Romania—According to the Tanzanian newspaper Business Day, the Tanzanian cellular operator Vodacom announced that after one year, 130,000 subscribers have been signed up to GSM services rather than the 15,000 that were expected to subscribe.Growth has proved so rapid that the company should...
WOODBURY, N.Y.-South African carrier Vodacom, part of the Vodafone Group, selected Comverse to provide its 5 million-customer base with call-return service, which allows users to easily return voicemail calls."Vodacom's Callback represents another useful service that Comverse has added to its current voicemail boxes, which...
AlcatelChina. With China Unicom for CDMA equipment for a national network.Value: US$157 millionChina. With Gansu Mobile, Shanxi Mobile and Ning Xia Mobile for GSM expansion contracts.Value: UndisclosedThailand. With CP Orange for a nationwide GSM 1800 MHz network.Value: US$332 millionDatangChina. With China Unicom for CDMA equipment for a...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-The many delays that have beset South Africa's third mobile network license process could be at an end. In February, the Minister of Communications Dr. Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri announced the winner was the Saudi Oger-financed Cell C consortium, despite the fact that a...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-Pay phones may not be the panacea to Africa's need of extending telephony, but in rural areas where there is little or no fixed infrastructure, wireless-and specifically GSM-pay phones provide a viable option. Wireless pay phones can be an ideal tool to...
NigeriaIntercellular Nigeria awarded a US$21 million contract to Motorola for the supply and deployment of a CDMA fixed wireless local loop (WLL) network expansion. The 800 MHz system will be expanded for up to 45,000 limited mobility subscribers.South AfricaTETRA technology, a digital two-way radio...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-Econet Wireless is gearing up to become one of the leading cellular operators on the African continent. With Botswana and Zimbabwe cellular operations firmly under its wing, it has recently gained further momentum by winning the privatization license bid in Lesotho and...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-In a cash-strapped society and an environment where wireless technology is expected to supplant fixed telephony, prepaid has become a panacea for new African operators-so much so that several are rolling out networks purely on a prepaid platform.Research conducted by South African-based...
SANDTON, South Africa-The wave of liberalization and privatization that has been sweeping the African economic markets has spread to communications, revealing rich untapped potential for future investment.Cellular markets have been the area's most dynamic telecoms sectors, with extraordinarily high growth rates and numerous new...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-Cell C, the consortium backed by Middle Eastern conglomerate Saudi Oger with CellSaf as a local partner, has been officially named as the preferred consortium for the third cellular license in South Africa. Cell C linked up with GTE shortly before the...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-The wireless market in Tanzania is gaining momentum with Vodacom's pending rollout of a new GSM network. The new entrant is no small force to contend with and is likely to cause a few ripples.Vodacom South Africa, with 2.7 million subscribers at...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-Nextel Communications Inc. is eyeing the African continent as an ideal market for iDEN, the technology it uses in the United States. So much so that a consortium, AfricaSpeaks, included iDEN, in partnership with Nextel, in its business plan for its recent...
SANDTON, South Africa-A wave of liberalization and privatization is transforming the cellular market in Africa. Countries riding high on this tide include South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Mauritius, C"te d'Ivoire, Kenya and Uganda.Pyramid Research predicts that only Angola, Burundi, Libya and Gambia will have...
CameroonCameroon is privatizing its two cellular phone networks. The first network is the newly created GSM concession, which was purchased by France Cable Radio but has not yet been built. The second network is the existing cellular phone network created and run by Camtel-Mobile....
WASHINGTON-In what a spokeswoman for the Personal Communications Industry Association termed a "comedy of errors," the wireless industry and the Federal Communications Commission last week missed an opportunity to tout the wonders of wireless technology in developing countries.FCC Chairman William Kennard and key FCC...
SANDTON, South Africa-Tanzania has been described as one of the least-developed countries in the world per capita, yet only recently prominent local investors with international backing have described it as "Africa's rising star."Taking advice that the country needs to make its business environment more...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-The potential bidders for the third cellular license in South Africa are determined to break the existing Vodacom-MTN duopoly. "We will be competing head-on with MTN and Vodacom for a slice of the lucrative market, believed to be worth R10 billion (US$2...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-Competition in the South African wireless telecommunications sector is likely to be fierce this year, with two new cellular operators scheduled to enter the arena. This will delve a blow to existing operators MTN and Vodacom, which have had exclusive preserve of...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-Uganda has one of the lowest penetration rates of telephone services in the world. As of July 1995, the Uganda Posts & Telecommunication Corp. (UPTC) had an installed capacity of just under 70,000 lines and approximately 42,000 subscribers. The result is a...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-The licensing of two additional cellular carriers in South Africa will represent the biggest opportunity for black empowerment in Africa-and for some, the last chance to become involved in the vibrant telecommunications market here.When the Department of Communications issues tender invitations later...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-The long-awaited launch of cellular service in Botswana is expected to have a huge impact on the country's communications and business sector.Botswana's small population of 1.47 million people was seen as a main reason for the delay. Proposals for cellular can be...
Across most of the world's regions, carriers and analysts are claiming prepaid cellular a resounding success. Along with calling party pays, it is considered one of the leading contributors to current subscriber growth.Some carriers now are getting more than half of new subscribers through...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-The debate of issuing a third or fourth cellular license in South Africa is gaining momentum, with the industry pressuring the government to speed up the tendering process before the existing operators become so powerful they would eliminate any other competitor."We recommend...
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa-High on the agenda of issues raised by African ministers at Africa Telecom '98 held here in May was using satellite technology for boosting African economies and low telephone-penetration rates.Africa presents an ideal candidate for Mobile Satellite Services (MSS). The continent is...
