North Africa is heading for a general increase in competition in the telecommunications markets. InMorocco, the third mobile licence has of course been awarded to Wana, a locally owned fixed-mobileoperator, which Zain is now a minority shareholder in, and we anticipate the launch date of Wana’s fullymobile service. In Tunisia, the third mobile licence, along with a second licence to offer fixed-lineservices, was won by a consortium led by France Télécom. Again, no date for service launch has beenset, but things are definitely set to be shaken up.
Also in Morocco, the industry in the region was somewhat disappointed when Telefónica and PortugalTelecom’s stakes in Méditel were sold to a group of Moroccan investment companies rather than to asignificant new investor. Many have been interested, including Etisalat and Saudi Telecom. It is stillpossible that some or all of the stakes will be sold on to a foreign company, but certainly the initialexcitement around the prospect has dissipated.
Overall, the first half of 2009 saw generally much slower growth than the first half of 2008. This is to beexpected for two reasons. The first is that all three of these markets are approaching saturation, and asthey get closer to this point, the supply of totally new mobile users starts to dwindle, and growthinevitably slows. The second reason is the economic situation in H109 that most countries are findingthemselves in. Although some countries are starting to pull out of official recession, and, indeed, somenever officially entered one, it is still not a good time for consumer confidence. BMI has observed manymobile markets seeing a small slowdown in H109, and North Africa seems to fall into this pattern. Stillthe slowdown is not likely to be permanent.
This being said, some operators are suffering from more difficult problems. Maroc Telecom, inparticular, saw significant net losses in Q209, after having also seen net losses in Q408. The companyitself has put this down to more intense competition, especially in the price category, but we do not thinkthis bodes well for the operator as it awaits the introduction of more competition.
North Africa is a relatively strong area in terms of its fixed-line sector. Across the world, fixed-linemarkets have been suffering from mobile substitution, and in most markets in Africa the fixed-linenetwork is so limited that it has barely any impact. In North Africa the networks are comparativelyextensive, and the fixed-line markets appear to have been somewhat insulated from the effects of mobilesubstitution. In Morocco, fixed-wireless technologies and competition came to the rescue, and BMIbelieves that they will shortly do the same in Tunisia. However, even with this reasonably clean bill ofhealth, BMI is expecting the decline to set in within the next five years.
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