Ecuadorian mobile telephony operators ended September with 11.3 million subscribers compared to 9.65 million at end-September 2007, telecoms supervisory body Supertel said on its website, reported by BNamericas. Porta, a unit of Mexico’s America Movil, continued to lead the market with 7.67 million subscribers, followed by Movistar Ecuador, owned by Spain’s Telefonica, with 2.95 million users, and locally-owned Alegro PCS with 672,366 customers. During September, the three mobile operators added 154,164 net new subscribers between them, and at the end of the month there were a total of 10.45 million GSM subscribers, or 92.5% of the country’s total.

News source www.afriquenligne.fr is reporting that the Gambian government has cancelled a partnership agreement with Lebanese-owned company Spectrum International over the management of national telecoms incumbent Gambia Telecommunications Company (Gamtel), citing a statement from the President’s Office which was broadcast yesterday by state-run Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS). According to the statement, the decision was taken ‘due to fundamental breaches of provisions of partnership agreement made between the government and Spectrum International…This was further exacerbated by the underperformance of the company and the deterioration of the country’s telecommunications infrastructure under its watch.’ The decision followed President Yahya Jammeh’s 72-hour-ultimatum to the company to submit financial and other information on the state of the telco (and presumably Gamtel’s wholly owned cellular subsidiary Gamcel, although this was not confirmed).

UK-based mobile group Vodafone has released its financial results for its first half of fiscal year 2008/09, reporting that in the six months ended 30 September 2008 group revenue rose 17% to GBP19.9 billion (USD31.4 billion), with data revenue accounting for 7% of total revenues, and increasing 48% year-on-year to GBP1.4 billion. Despite the increase, the group has cut its full-year forecast for revenues to GBP38.8-39.7 billion, down from GBP39.9-40.7 billion, citing a more difficult macroeconomic environment. Vodafone has also announced that it plans to reduce operating costs by approximately GBP1 billion by the 2011 financial year. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the group increased 10.3% year-on-year to GBP7.24 billion, while adjusted operating profit for the six-month period was up 10.5% to GBP5.77 billion.

Indian tower infrastructure company, Quippo Telecom Infrastructure (QTIL), is aiming to raise approximately USD600 million through a combination of equity and debt to finance expansion, according to India’s Economic Times. QTIL is reportedly planning to invest USD3 billion in the year to end-March 2009 to expand its infrastructure and the company intends to increase the number of towers it has in operation to 25,000 by 2010; it currently has 5,000. Additionally, reports have suggested that QTIL may move to acquire a stake in Tata Telecom’s tower business, whilst it has also been linked with plans to invest in the Essar Group’s tower infrastructure section; QTIL has not commented or confirmed either of these rumours.
QTIL managing director, Arun Kapar, noted, ‘Being a capital intensive business, we do need funds…we are in the process of raising additional funds. However, it is too early to comment on this’. The company successfully sold an 18.74% stake to Oman Investment Fund, and a further 12.19% each to Quippo Infrastructure, DB Zwim, IDFC Private Equity and Indivests in August 2008 to raise USD185 million.

Thai mobile market leader Advanced Info Service (AIS) has posted third quarter net profit of THB4.53 billion (USD130 million), up 29% from THB3.51 billion a year earlier, as it signed up a higher number of subscribers in the provinces. AIS’s service revenues in the July-September period rose by 8.3% from a year earlier, fuelled by growth of pre-paid voice revenue and non-voice services, although turnover fell 1.9% from the previous quarter due to seasonal factors and the impact of the floods in the north, said a statement from the company. AIS, part-owned by Singapore’s SingTel, had 26.8 million subscribers at end-September 2008, up 15.4% year-on-year, as it added a net 810,000 new subscribers in the quarter versus 877,000 in 2Q. Its statement continued, ‘Due to strong revenue momentum with 8.6% year-on-year growth in the first nine months of 2008, service revenue guidance for 2008 is maintained at 7%-8% despite the economic slowdown.’

Israel’s largest mobile operator by subscribers, Cellcom, has revealed a 5% increase in total revenues year-on-year for the three months ended 30 September 2008, with the operator attributing the growth to an increase in revenues from content and value added services. Total revenues for the three-month period were USD482.3 million, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) also increased, rising 12.9% to USD184.2 million. Net profit for the operator however saw an 11% fall y-o-y to USD69.9 million, although this was attributed to a one-off gain in the same period last year; eliminating the tax provision release from 3Q 2007 the cellco actually increased net income by 20.1%. Cellcom also reported a higher than expected increase in subscriber figures, adding 40,000 new customers - all post-paid - to reach 3.16 million.

The Bangkok Post reports that Thai communications group Jasmine International plans to increase its holding in fixed line operator TT&T to 40% from its current level of 30% as part of TT&T’s previously announced debt restructuring and corporate rehabilitation programme. The news came from Jasmine’s CEO Pete Bodharamik, who also said that Triple T Broadband, TT&T’s broadband internet arm, planned to introduce higher speed services next year, faster than 6Mbps, whilst also launching IPTV packages, including 30 TV channels, video- and karaoke-on-demand, interactive content and internet browsing. Mr Bodharamik said the company expected a total of 370,000 broadband subscribers by the end of this year, contributing almost 40% to its total earnings, and added that Jasmine planned to spend THB2 billion (USD58 million) over the next two years to expand broadband networks, including THB100 million each on Wi-Fi and WiMAX technology. About THB1.7 billion, slated for 300,000 broadband ports in Bangkok, will be lent by Chinese supplier Huawei Technologies, to be repaid in 42 months.

AllAfrica is reporting that management at Zambia Telecommunications Company (Zamtel) has assigned the director of commercial services and other managers to oversee the company’s core services and operations in a move aimed at keeping the telco running during the ongoing workers strike. As a result of the strike customers experiencing line failures and other issues have reported that faults remain unattended, but Charles Kachikoti, public relations manager for Zamtel, noted, ‘We are aware that with the problem at hand, we still have to ensure that operations keep running. We have to attend to transactions and faults.’
The strike was called after workers demanded that management of the telco and union officials start negotiations for improved salaries and conditions of service; the talks were expected to begin six months ago but Zamtel management has claimed it is not possible to increase salaries as the operator is presently making losses.

Thanks to Mark Hooft at Ubiquitous Thoughts for hosting this week’s Carnival, and highlighting a couple of my posts. Some other really good reference to others’ blog posts as well, like Mjelly’s post on the impact of the recession on mobile. Check it o…

Clearly, access to the Internet from mobile devices is increasingly rapidly, from smartphones, lower-end featurephones and (depending on your definition) notebooks/netbooks.As I’ve written about many times before, there’s a huge debate about whether th…

When using your Treo Smartphone every day you might ask how you can protect your device from scratches, crushes etc. One possibility is the Proporta leather case for the Treo 650.

The case consists of leather and a piece of aluminium in the lid which gives some extra stability and protects the screen from […]

Sprint CEO Claims Pole Position in Race to 4G: The competitive future of the wireless industry in the United States will have much less to do with phone calls and text messages than it will advanced data services delivered over lighting-fast broadband networks, according to Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. Speaking here at the National Press Club, Hesse told a packed ballroom that his company’s investment in the WiMAX standard for a high-speed, fourth-generation (4G) network, which it took live in Baltimore last month, could give it the inside track to overtake larger rivals AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Through each iteration of network enhancements, the wireless industry has seen its major players back competing standards in what Hesse called “religious wars.” The race to 4G is no exception.

Nationwide 4G WiMAX gets the green light: WiMAX users in the US will be getting their 4G wireless services not from Sprint — and not from the “old” Clearwire — but from a combined entity known as “New Clearwire.” The long sought after FCC approval of a $14.5 billion WiMAX merger between Sprint-Nextel and Clearwire opens the door to the start of nationwide 4G services to be offered through a new provider called New Clearwire, an entity that will compete with 4G LTE services from Verizon Wireless and AT&T.

We all want LTE now: T-Mobile has announced recently that it plans to skip HSPA+ altogether and focus on LTE. It wants to roll out LTE network by 2010. The main reason for its decision stems from the fact that since MIMO is introduced in HSPA+, it wants to avoid the upgrade cost if LTE is available in couple of years. We have to remember though that HSPA+ is more of an upgrade to the existing HSPA and we can be assured of the reliability and the quality that we have so got used to. On the other hand, LTE may have its own problems and since it will be new technology, it would take time to mature. Can T-Mobile afford to go through this period of uncertainty and maturisation on its own without something to fall back on. According to Ihab Ghattas, assistant president of Huawei Middle East, the Chinese telecommunications equipment and solutions provider plans to launch its first LTE/SAE commercial network in June 2009, providing LTE/SAE infrastructure to mobile operators.

Wireless Backhaul Today — Part 3: As Mobile Video and other bandwidth-hungry mobile applications dominate the wireless communications infrastructure, wireless backhaul — the transfer of traffic from a wireless base station back to the core network (and ultimately the Internet) — become critical. In the past, T1s and E1s were used to do this, but increasing bandwidth demands encourage the deployment of fiber, which can be expensive. The latest approach is to use point-to-point wireless backhaul technologies, or a combination of wireless and fiber. In this six-part series, we take a look at what’s happening with wireless backhaul today.