The end of 2008 saw a noticeable slowdown in mobile markets across North Africa, but most especiallyin Algeria and Morocco. In Algeria, Algérie Télécom experienced an unfortunate end of year in itsmobile business, actually losing subscribers in the final quarter. In Morocco, the downturn was not asdramatic, but it still made the end of year subscriber totals distinctly unimpressive. It would be easy to saythat this slow down is in reaction to the global economic situation and that it is set to continue. However,BMI expects things to pick up again during 2009 and suspects that practical considerations like thecancellation of unregistered or inactive SIMs had as much to do with the slowdown as falling consumerconfidence.
As a result of lower than expected end of year figures, we have revised our mobile forecasts for Tunisia,Algeria and Morocco. As already mentioned, we do expect growth to pick up again, at least a little,although, thanks to maturing markets, it is expected to slowdown gradually in terms of a long-term trend.Despite our prediction of a return to our projected long-term growth path for all three markets, theforecasts are nonetheless lower than previously, thanks to the low totals at the end of the year as a startingpoint.
Morocco has seen the official licensing of Wana as the country’s third GSM mobile operator. Wana wasalready successful in offering fixed-wireless and semi mobile services over its CDMA network, and it isexpected to make a success of a GSM venture, despite the challengingly mature market. Kuwait’s Zainhas also taken a minority stake in the company, providing it presumably with some helpful investmentand good experience of rolling out GSM networks.
In Algeria the much-anticipated privatisation of Algérie Télécom was at first delayed for two to threeyears pending modernisation works, and then completely called off, in a move that will no doubt frustratepotential investors, such as Saudi Telecom Company, which had been eagerly awaiting news of a tender.Tunisia, like Morocco, will be seeing more competition, as the telecoms market is finally to see moreliberalisation with the licensing of new fixed and mobile operators. This has been expected for some time,since Tunisia has generally had a fairly liberalising stance in other sectors, and telecoms appeared to belagging behind. It is hoped that the privatisation of Tunisie Telecom will follow.
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