Trends & Forecasts

GSM penetration in Morocco topped the 40% mark last year - and yet some 80% of GSM users are still using payphone services for national calls.

Claiming that Cambodia's morality is not yet advanced enough to withstand the lures of pornographic videos on mobile telephones, Prime Minister Hun Sen on May 26 announced a 10-year ban on 3G technology. Esther McClaren, a writer with the Phnom Penh Post, the main English language newspaper in Cambodia, brings us up to date with reactions locally...

Following identification as a potentially strong Internet market, Eastern and Central Africa have now been singled out as markets set for exceptional growth on cellular applications...

After more than two years of hesitating to make a decision, CosmoRom was taken over by Greece's Cosmote and commercially re-launched on December 6 2005 under the new brand name Cosmote Romania. Developing Telecoms welcomes its new Central and Eastern Europe analyst Dr Nicolae Oacã, who fills in the gaps in a complex market.

On May 3 this year the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCTI) signed a contract with Credit Suisse First Boston to provide consultancy for the listing of the Romanian   State 's shares in fixed telephony operator RomTelecom...

Next year the 13 countries making up the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) will take one step further towards their aim of integrating the economies of their region...

A few weeks ago, leading Liberian commentator Francis Nyepon described the agonising experiences of the Liberian Telecommunications Company in his article How vital is Liberia Telecoms to Liberia? Francis Nyepon returns to Developing Telecoms, this time to recommend policies to his country's government which will create conditions for economic growth and success. Whilst this feature does not address the telecoms sector directly, it none the less provides a clear description of the background against which the sector must rebuild. Francis Nyepon is, of necessity, out-spoken.

Having recently reviewed the success of mobile phones in sub-Saharan Africa, Michael Schwartz looks at the benefits to Africa of the Internet...

The worldwide movement by operators to deploy high-speed mobile broadband services based on W-CDMA and High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) standards is claimed by the GSM Association (GSMA) to be fuelling unprecedented economies of scale in the supply of equipment for carriers and handsets for consumers.

Good news and Africa seldom go together. Let's be blunt about it. It may be a case of "Bad news alone sells newspapers" but on the whole there is little, rightly or wrongly, to be happy about. And then...

Two years of acquisitions in Latin America by Telefonica, Spain' s largest telephone company, have now come to an end.

Research and Markets, the Dublin-based analyst group, has published the fifth edition of its Africa Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband Market Overviews. The overviews cover the role of various technologies such as broadband and convergence, the effects of regulation, the major players and how the African market has performed.

WiMAX is now commercially available in Algeria , while several operators in many Arab countries have started testing the service.