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Sudan Telecommunications Report Q4 2009Product Type: Market Research ReportPublished by: Business Monitor International Published: August 2009 Product Code: R302-7768 Description At the end of 2008, Sudan had 11.745mn mobile subscribers, having enjoyed a quarter of record growth,after a dismal Q308, which had happened due to disconnections resulting from SIM registration. Q109also saw reasonable growth overall, seeing 988,000 net additions which is quite typical for Sudan.What was unusual, however, was how many of these belonged to Zain. Zain took 72% of all net additionsfor the quarter, indicating that its supremacy in the market is not going to be massively challenged anytime soon. MTN in particular had a dreadful quarter in terms of adding numbers to its subscriber basewith only 58,000 net additions. ARPUs have taken another nosedive. This is characteristic of many countries in Africa this quarter, wherecurrency fluctuations and contracting consumer spending on nearly all types of goods and services haveexacerbated the existing downward trend in ARPUs. This original trend comes as a result of increasingcompetition, and the fact that new growth in most markets is now coming exclusively from the bottom, asmobile services penetrate deeper into the poorer end of society. The expansion of services into Southern Sudan continues, with January 2009 seeing the launch ofVivacell, the first network dedicated exclusively to the semi-autonomous South. Value-added services are not very well developed in Sudan. There is some 3G available, though thequality of service is apparently very limited and in some cases restricted only to the postpaid subscriberbase, which is minimal. MTN has hinted at some more investment in its 3G facilities in its end of year2008 statement, but details are not available. There is some good potential for the operators to developVAS, concentrating on the more developed areas and around Khartoum and elsewhere. This could help tocounterbalance the move towards the lower end of the market in the growing subscriber base. Fixed-line services remain something of a mystery, since there is no reliable information from either theoperators or the regulator. Suffice to say that fixed-line services, even fixed wireless, are not verywidespread. Internet service is even less common; broadband in particular had only an estimated 65,000subscribers at the end of 2008. However, the country does claim 4mn internet users, so it would appearthat the vast majority of people are making use of public facilities. This bodes well for future demand forinternet services, but we do not expect broadband to become a widespread service for some years tocome, with the cost remaining prohibitively high for most people. Table of Contents
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