MEA region
The Middle East and Africa region is rich in emerging countries. The telecom sector is there one of the fastest growing in the world. S. Africa dominates the market, but Nigeria is catching quickly, reducing almost by half its gap in a quarter. The third local market is Algeria, with Saudi Arabia immediately behind and Egypt closing the gap with both of them. Morocco is sixth, but Iran is close. Kenya, Israel, Tunisia, are following. Tanzania, Sudan, DRC Congo and Ethiopia should be candidate to enter the top 10 soon. MEA currently has over 300m connections, of which almost 26m added in 1Q07. It is noticeable to highlight that GSM technologies (2G and 3G) portion in new subscriptions fell again in Q1 2007 for the fifth successive quarter. CDMA technologies therefore gained influence (mainly in Sudan and Angola). There were about 4.2m 3G users in MEA (of which 3.7m WCDMA and 0.5m CDMA EV-DO) and 5.1m CDMA 2000 1x.
Top 10 mobile operators in the region are unchanged, but ranking differs quarter on quarter. Vodacom (S. Africa) leads the pack with 20.5m users, followed by TCI (Iran) and STC (S. Arabia) with respectively 16m and 15.5m. TCI is growing very fast and is not threatened by STC. Then a pack of three operators with about 13+m subscribers: MTN Nigeria, MTN S. Africa and Globalcom (Nigeria) with Globalcom growing the fastest and catching with MTN. Another pack of three MNOs with about 11m users follows with Maroc Telecom, Orascom Algeria, and Mobilnil (Egypt). Mobilnil is distancing another Egyptian operator Vodafone Egypt ranked 10th with less than 9.5m users. Globally, top 10 local MNOs account for about 45% of the regional mobile market.