The Total Telecom editorial team are in Barcelona in force for Mobile World Congress, gathering content for our popular #MWC news service. Already the stories are coming thick and fast and you can view them all on our dedicated channel.
More than ever this year the role for expert editors is clear, providing a way for the readers to cut through the barrage of social media noise, most of which is exhibitor promotions (or self promotion!) - see for yourself in the widget below!
So for a clearer picture make sure you keep up to date on Total Telecom http://www.totaltele.com/topic.aspx?C=7
African Mobile Market - Boom or Bust ?
The boom in African mobile telecommunications appears to be
under threat due to an uncertain investment environment, owing largely due to
overcrowding of companies and ruthless competition for clients.
In a recent article published
on www.totaltele.com, Mary Lennigham, Editor at
Total Telecom says “Cooperation between governments and operators has driven
significant growth in the African mobile industry over the past decade.
However, there are no guarantees that this growth will continue”, the
article goes on to highlight key points from a new report by Booz &
Company, stating that “a number of issues must be addressed as the continent
moves towards the next phase of mobile development”.
The report states that investors are hesitating due to
extreme pricing pressure, continued regulatory risk and escalating unattractive
investment environment, thus jeopardising the next wave of telecoms investment
and growth in Africa.
Indeed, Dr Bitange Ndemo, Ministry of Informations and Communications Permanent
Secretary backs up the claims in the report by Booz & Company saying that “there has been
market erosion of up to 20%, mostly because of competition that has seen cuts in
tariffs in the sector. A new entrant or investors would have a lot of problems
as the major firms are struggling due to stiff competition”. Certainly the four major firms, namely Bharti
Airtel, Orange, Safaricom and MTN are competing aggressively for subscribers,
with tariff cuts in both voice calls and data services being extremely significant,
making it difficult for new entrants to enter the competition.
However
it may not be all doom and gloom as the next wave of growth could be spurned by
increased focus on innovation, roll out of new products and investment in
expansion of data services and value added services. Indeed services like
M-Pesa or other mobile financial solutions and mHealth, which according to the
GSMA, will generate £1.2 billion by 2017, are expected to create significant
growth in the African Market. Perhaps also as adoption of 4G networks and LTE expands
in the coming years, increasing mobile penetration in Africa, there is scope
for new entrants and investors to gain from the continent.
ForgetMeNot Africa, is one such company aiming
is to bridge the digital
divide for Africans by
providing Internet messaging on every mobile phone. Their innovative technology connects the huge
gap between the Internet and mobile messaging worlds allowing any mobile phone
to send and receive email and chat-message on any carrier’s network. Today
ForgetMeNot Africa has bloomed into a carrier class Unified Messaging service
provider, leading the way for innovators to profit from Africa’s tentative
investment situation.
Jeremy George, COO at Forget Me Not Africa, will be part of the panel discussing "How mobile deployments are playing out in Developing Markets". To find out what the current challenges and opportunities for operators are within these regions and what predictions we can make regarding the future of these markets, join Total Telecom Wireless World, on the 12th-13th of June, 2012.
Jeremy George, COO at Forget Me Not Africa, will be part of the panel discussing "How mobile deployments are playing out in Developing Markets". To find out what the current challenges and opportunities for operators are within these regions and what predictions we can make regarding the future of these markets, join Total Telecom Wireless World, on the 12th-13th of June, 2012.
Who has the best vendor #brand in #telecoms?
This research is pretty clear cut, these are the most valuable brands, but are they the best? To get this answer, we need to include other more qualitative factors, reflecting how the industry thinks and feels about brands, and this is the role of Best Brand category at the World Vendor Awards #WVA2012, where the winner is determined by the votes of the industry.
In 2011 Ericsson were triumphant at the awards, beating off stiff competition from the likes of Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Juniper Networks (winner of the Best Brand Campaign category in 2010), and ZTE, and reflecting that you don't need to have the most valuable brand to be the industries Best Brand.
Since then, Ericsson have climbed the rankings from number three to number two most valuable brand, so will this help them win again in 2012, or will the competition be too fierce for them? Only you can determine this, by casting your vote for the Best Brand category for the 2012 World Vendor Awards.
This year 20 great telecom hardware vendor brands are currently in the running, so vote today to help determine who will be on the final shortlist, to be published at the end of April. Those in the running are:
- Alcatel-Lucent
- Amdocs
- Ciena
- Cisco
- Corning
- Ericsson
- Harris
- HP
- Huawei
- Juniper Networks
- Motorola
- NEC
- NetCracker
- Nokia Siemens Networks
- Openwave
- Qualcomm
- Syniverse
- Telcordia
- Tellabs
- ZTE
The Best Brand survey is hosted on Survey Monkey, and you can vote by following this link, or you can go to the homepage of the World Vendor Awards www.worldvendorawards.com and vote there.
Visualisation of the top 100 operators: #infographic
The annual Total Telecom Global 100 Operators report is stuffed full of information. This new infographic is just a snapshot. You can get loads more information by downloading the free report.
Work for us! Sponsorship #job
If you are interested, or know someone who might be, find out more on our website.
One Month to Enter #ACA12
The awards recognises the successes of telecoms companies, operators and vendors alike, with headquarters in the Asia region to the wider telecom industry. Categories range from specifics like Cloud Service and Social Media Initiative to the generic achievements of Operator and vendor of the Year. Find out more about the categories here.
Why not gain some inspiration as to what the judges are looking for by watching some of the videos from 2011, where you can here from winners and sponsors of the inaugural awards.
2012 venue now confirmed, the spectacular Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel Singapore
Rumour Watch - Snow interrupts Singapore Conference
In a city where the lowest ever recorded temperature is 17 degrees celcius this may sound unlikely, but we have it on good authority that amongst those heading for Singapore this weekend from the UK was the CEO of the TM Forum, Martin Creaner - the man due to give the keynote Rethinking Communications at 9:10 on day 1.
Total Telecom assume a directive was offered to the assembled telecom executives of talk quietly amongst themselves, whilst 6,000 miles away the agenda was no doubt Rethinking Transportation....
We hope we won't have to do any snow contingency plans in June, when we will run the 2nd annual Asia Communication Awards in Singapore. Entry deadline 16 March 2012, FIND OUT MORE
Top Telecom Vendors: Awards Shortlist Published #WVA2012
The shortlist for the World Vendor Awards 2012 is out and includes not only most of the big players, such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and ZTE, but also a strong showing from smaller players and some more unusual names. One that stands out is Sage who we would recognise for their accounting software, but would not traditionally think of as a telecom vendor.The list of 44 companies that have made the shortlist is on the website www.worldvendorawards.com plus there is still an opportunity for more companies to join the finalists as the voting has begun in the two industry voted categories: Best Brand and CEO of the Year.
Candidates in the voted categories have been nominated by the industry, World Vendor Awards judges and editors of Total Telecom, so make sure your favourites are in with a chance and VOTE TODAY!
The CEO's in the running are:
- Ben Verwaayen: Alcatel-Lucent
- Charlie Vogt: GENBAND
- Cui Liangjun: ZTE
- Gary Smith: Ciena
- Hannes van Rensburg: Fundamo
- Hans Vestberg: Ericsson
- Jean-Yves Leclerc: Ipanema Technologies
- Jeff Gordon: Syniverse
- Karl Thedéen: Transmode
- Kevin Freij: MYMobileSecurity Ltd
- Mike Frayne: VOSS Solutions
- Mohan Kumar: Plintron Technologies
- Rajeev Suri: Nokia Siemens Networks
- Ren Zhengfei: Huawei
- Thomas R. Stanton: ADTRAN, Inc.
- Vivek Ragavan: Actelis Networks
Whilst the Best Brand contenders are: Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs, Ciena, Cisco, Corning, Ericsson, Harris, HP, Huawei, Juniper Networks, Motorola, NEC, NetCracker, Nokia Siemens Networks, Openwave, Qualcomm, Syniverse, Telcordia, Tellabs, ZTE.
The shortlist for the two voted categories will be announced after voting closes on the 23 March 2012, so don't miss out, CAST YOUR VOTE
CommunicAsia & ACA 2012
The second annual Asia Communication Awards #ACA2012 will take place in Singapore during CommunicAsia 2012.
Rupert Owen, International Director of CommunicAsia spoke to Brian Dolby about how they see the ACA as adding value the annual telecoms gathering in Singapore, as well as about other development this year, including more national and technology pavilions.
Entries for the 2012 Asia Communication Awards must be received by 16 March 2012. Find out more on the website www.asiacommsawards.com
Rupert Owen, International Director of CommunicAsia spoke to Brian Dolby about how they see the ACA as adding value the annual telecoms gathering in Singapore, as well as about other development this year, including more national and technology pavilions.
Entries for the 2012 Asia Communication Awards must be received by 16 March 2012. Find out more on the website www.asiacommsawards.com
Everything Everywhere: telecom brand turmoil
Today Total Telecom publishes it's annual ranking of the top 50 operator brands (by value) in global telecommunications, and whilst Everything Everywhere doesn't feature as a brand, their influence is there for all to see.
This might be being a little unfair to EE as it is more of a case of Everything All-over-the-place as on one hand speculation mounts regarding the relative positioning of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, whilst thousands of miles away, the actions of the Indian Supreme Court in calling re-auctioning of Mobile licences will hit some major international players, such as Telenor, Etisalat, and Vodafone - see this weeks Friday Review.
The top 50 global telecom operator brands includes numerous players engulfed in turmoil, so it will be interesting to see if this impacts their brand value when we report next year, in particular whether this is another factor in play amongst the top three, Vodafone, AT&T, and Verizon.
>> The Brand Ranking is published in February Total Telecom+ <<
This might be being a little unfair to EE as it is more of a case of Everything All-over-the-place as on one hand speculation mounts regarding the relative positioning of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, whilst thousands of miles away, the actions of the Indian Supreme Court in calling re-auctioning of Mobile licences will hit some major international players, such as Telenor, Etisalat, and Vodafone - see this weeks Friday Review.
The top 50 global telecom operator brands includes numerous players engulfed in turmoil, so it will be interesting to see if this impacts their brand value when we report next year, in particular whether this is another factor in play amongst the top three, Vodafone, AT&T, and Verizon.
>> The Brand Ranking is published in February Total Telecom+ <<
So what #phone will you take to Barcelona?
This isn't an issue of phone envy as yours looks shoddy alongside the latest gleaming offerings, but according to dating site Match.com, more an issue of what your phone says about you...
Their recent survey, reported by VentureBeat reveals that Android users are most likely to have visited an online dating site, whilst iPhone users are the quickest to follow up after a first date (good news in the limited timespan of MWC?). As for Blackberry users, they fall in love and first sight, then get drunk! Read the results in their full glory here.
What the survey doesn't make clear is what impact, if any, these perceptions have on the brands using these operating system. We'll have to ask our friends at Brand Finance if they considered romantic connotations when compiling this years telecom brand valuation, including the Top 10 Handset Makers, which you will find on page 13 of this months Total Telecom+
RELATED CONTENT:
Mobile device developments: Phoney War (Total Telecom+ Welcome to 2012)
Top 50 Telecommunications Brand Ranking (Total Telecom+ February 2012)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)