Telecoms Today in the Middle East

(PRWEB) May 13, 2004 -- Middle Eastern countries are beginning to move towards less government involvement and greater competition in their telecoms markets, often encouraged by World Trade Organisation (WTO) membership requirements. The least deregulated markets in the Middle East is Qatar, which has no competition in any telecom market segment and has not as yet announced any plans to introduce competition. Qatar’s incumbent Q-Tel is also the industry regulator. Despite having by far the highest GDP per capita of the small Gulf countries, Qatar has the lowest mobile penetration and the second lowest Internet penetration. Seeming low fixed-line teledensity rates in the region are in a large part the result of larger households and the low average age of the population. Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) all have 100% household penetration or more. Some 60% of the Saudi Arabian population is estimated to be fewer than 20, according to the Economist magazine. This inevitably has a dramatic effect on teledensity statistics.

Fixed-line teledensity is either falling or steady in most of the region as mobile services take market share. Only the less developed (and low mobile penetration) markets of Syria and Iran have experienced recent fixed-line growth. Change is on the way in the mobile markets of the Middle East, most of which have not been characterised by either a high degree of competition or privately owned operators. UAE is the latest to join the trend, in April 2004 announcing an end to incumbent Etisalat’s total monopoly. Oman and Saudi Arabia are currently engaged in selling a second GSM licence, a second licence was awarded by Iran to a consortium in February 2004, three licences were awarded for Iraq in late 2003 and Bahrain awarded a second licence in April 2003. Jordan is auctioning a third GSM licence. Yemen is also planning to award a third licence but its low economic development would suggest it might not be highly sought after. Lebanon is an exception. Its government has decided to continue with state ownership of its two mobile networks and a tender to manage the network was completed in April 2004. Etisalat of the UAE launched Third generation (3G) services in December 2003, the first Middle Eastern operator to do so. Iraq has been a major market for satellite mobile services in the aftermath of the 2003 war. By July 2003, UAE-based Thuraya had 45,000 subscribers in Iraq, out of its 154,000 subscribers worldwide, and Iraq accounted for 200,000 minutes per day of Thuraya’s daily usage total of 600,000.

Satellite dishes are abundant in the Arab Middle East and, as the footprints of satellites in the area cover the entire Arab region, most TV is pan-regional in availability, ownership and content production. State broadcasters have satellite channels in addition to terrestrial services and there are very many commercial channels, not all of them operating for commercial reasons, sharing inadequate advertising revenue. Most are transmitted by NileSat or ArabSat. A recent development has been the launch of several additional news channels to compete with Al Jazeera.

This report gives a brief over view of the Middle Eastern telecoms market. The market is changing, with rapidly increasing competition in the mobile sector and slowly reducing state involvement. Licence tenders to operate privately owned mobile networks have recently taken place, are taking place or are about to take place in seven of the fourteen countries. Mobiles are taking market share from declining fixed-line markets in the more developed countries. Internet use and broadband development are generally low for the relative levels of economic development but both Israel and the UAE are significant exceptions.

This report provides information on Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Each country is represented by its own chapter, comprehensively covering the key areas of interest including:

Key trends, Market overview, Regulatory environment, Major fixed network operators, Telecommunications infrastructure, Public data communications services, Internet, Broadband networks and services, Content and e-Services, Wireless communications, Broadcasting

For a complete index of this report click on http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/72043

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