JAN. 13 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) -Swedish telecoms company Teliasonera said that it would write $622m off the value of its Uzbek unit that it wants to sell. A corruption scandal has enveloped the Uzbek unit of Teliasonera and it has said that it wants to sell its entire Eurasian operations.
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(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)
DEC. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kazakh government said it has allowed local telecom operators to provide 4G services to their customers . State-owned Kazakhtelecom’s subsidiary Altel had been the only company that could use the 4G network. Other companies may now offer 4G data services, giving a much-needed competitive boost to Kazakhstan’s telecoms sector.
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(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)
JAN. 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The US online streaming service Netflix expanded its operations to 130 new countries, including those former Soviet states of South Caucasus and Central Asia. The expansion will give customers from Armenia to Tajikistan access to popular US TV shows through their internet connection.
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(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)
DEC. 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uzbekistan’s telecommunications ministry said it wanted to spend nearly $900m over the next five years improving broadband access across the country. Internet penetration in Uzbekistan is still low.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
NOV. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian telecoms company VimpelCom could be close to a $775m settlement with a US court that accused it of paying bribes to access mobile licences in Uzbekistan, Bloomberg reported. Earlier in November, the company set aside $900m for settlement costs. VimpelCom representatives declined to comment.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Nar Mobile brand of Azerbaijan’s telecoms company Azerfon said it has expanded 3G and 4G coverage in the country. Kent McNeley, Azerfon’s CEO, said the company has doubled its total network capacity in the past two years. Nar Mobile was awarded a licence to operate LTE networks earlier in February.
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(News report from Issue No. 258, published on Nov. 27 2015)
NOV. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkcell, Turkey’s biggest mobile service provider, is planning on buying TeliaSonera’s assets in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, Bloomberg News reported by quoting a source close to the company.
The source said that Turkcell had appointed HSBC and Citigroup to advise it on its potential bid to buy the stake in Fintur from TeliaSonera that it doesn’t already own.
Turkcell owns 41.45% of Rotterdam-based Fintur; TeliaSonera owns the rest. Fintur runs brands in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Moldova with 18m users.
Turkcell CEO, Kaan Terzioglu, appeared to confirm the company’s intention to buy TeliaSonera’s stake in Fintur. Answering journalists’ questions in Istanbul on when a deal would be finished, he said: “in 2016 if all the negotiations go well.”
The deal is important because it moves TeliaSonera towards its stated aim of selling its companies in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. It also owns businesses in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan which it wants to find a buyer for.
Earlier this year, it said that it wanted to sell up after investigations began into a corruption scandal at its Uzbek company. It is alleged to have paid Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, millions of dollars in bribes to gain access to the Uzbek mobile market in 2007/8.
Telenor, its Norwegian rival, is also investigating alleged corruption at its Uzbek subsidiary. It owns a 33% stake in Russia-based Vimpelcom which owns a company in Uzbekistan that also, allegedly paid a bribe to enter the market.
Turkcell is Turkey’s main mobile operator. Its shareholder structure has been argued over since 2011. It has shares listed on the New York and Istanbul stock exchanges but its institutional shareholders include Turkey’s Cukurova Holding, Russia’s AlfaGroup and TeliaSonera.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swedish mobile provider TeliaSonera appointed the former head ofTcell, Tajikistan’s biggest mobile network provider, Mansur Khamidov to be a vice-president in charge of the Eurasia region. TeliaSonera is currently restructuring its operations and has said that it wants to sell its Eurasia companies, partly because of corruption allegations alleged against its Uzbek subsidiary. As well as Tajikistan, TeliaSonera owns mobile operations in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swedish mobile operator TeliaSonera said that the authorities in Tajikistan had ordered it to block access to a series of social media sites, including Facebook, because of alleged security threats.
In an unusually candid note, TeliaSonera, which operates in Tajikistan under the Tcell brand, said it had complied with the order, given on Nov. 2, although it did cast some doubt on the motives behind it.
“Government’s requests or demands often serve legitimate purposes such as the protection of certain human rights, but they may also be problematic in that they could conflict with other human rights,” it said in a statement on its website. “TeliaSonera’s commitment is to respect freedom of expression in telecommunications.”
The authorities in Tajikistan often ban access to social media because they say radical Islamists have infiltrated it. Human rights groups, though, have accused the government of cracking down on free speech.
As well as blocking Facebook, the authorities also blocked the Russian websites odnoklassniki.ru and vk.ru.
TeliaSonera, which is looking to sell its businesses in Central Asia and the South Caucasus after a corruption scandal in Uzbekistan, said it doesn’t comment on domestic politics.
“However, TeliaSonera does engage in dialogue regarding requests from authorities that affect our business and customers of companies in which we have ownership interests,” it said.
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(News report from Issue No. 257, published on Nov. 20 2015)
NOV. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Norwegian telecoms company Telenor said it had suspended four executives, including COO Richard Olva Aa, while an investigation into alleged bribe paying by VimpelCom in Uzbekistan continues. Telenor owns 33% of VimpelCom.
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(News report from Issue No. 256, published on Nov. 13 2015)