Mobile operator strategies - 14/12/05

Virgin Mobile will launch MVNO services in South Africa, through a 50/50 venture with South African GSM network operator Cell C.

DoCoMo will acquire a stake in Just In Mobile International (JMI), a Chinese mobile payment company, for $6m. It also plans to acquire 10% stake in KTF (S. Korea) for $500-$600m.

PLDT' s SMART unit (Indonesia) and MobilOne (Singapore) confirm alliance to capture a share of the market of Filipinos working in Singapore. SMART will offer MVNO services using MobileOne network.

MTN (S. Africa) bought Libertis Telecom in the Republic of Congo for $102.5m. MTN has now operations in S. Africa, Nigeria, Zambia, Cameroon, Uganda, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Botswana, Swaziland, Iran and Rep. of Congo.

Richard Branson (Virgin Mobile) is prepared to do a deal with NTL at a significant discount to the price offered to minority shareholders.

BSNL (India) will launch this month a 60m-line, €3.6 bn, GSM tender, including 10m to 12m 3G lines. BSNL expects to reduce the cost of the network by 50% to Rs1,500 per GSM line.

MTS (Russia) bought 51% in Kyrgyzstan' s largest cellular operator, Bitel, for $ 150m. MTS already operates in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Russia's Rezervspetsmet, however, denies legality of the deal and claims that it is the rightful owner of 100% in Bitel.

Sprint Nextel has started selling full-length movies on mobile video phones.

Cingular has introduced the Cingular 2125 smart phone using Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system.

Vodacom (S. Africa) has launched mobile TV services.

Vodafone won Telsim (Turkey) bid with a $4,5bn offer, well above the reserve price of $2.8bn, but below the $6bn that the Turkish government has spent to cover losses at the failed Imar Bankasi AS. Vodafone will have to invest about $1bn in the radio and core network for upgrading it over the short term. Nokia will receive $340m and Motorola $500m+ from the proceeds, as they were owed several billions dollars as suppliers of Telsim.

Megafon (Russia) plans to bid for Uzbekistan' s Buztel, as well as Vimpelcom (Russia). The two companies are controlled by Altimo that also own BuzTel (100%) since end of 2004.

Fight continues between Telenor and Vimpelcom (Russia). Telenor' s representatives in Vimpelcom' s board of directors may block the Vimpelcom program discussion (quorum of eight out of nine members of the directors' board is needed) as they did not receive answers to questions on how the money will be spent, why the purchasing price of URS (Ukraine) was higher than planned, who received the money.

CelTel, a Pan-African GSM operator, has acquired a majority stake in Madagascar's mobile telecom operator, Madacom.

Oskar Vodafone has launched a service that enables customers to impose limits on the cost of their monthly phone bill.