Tag Archives: telecoms

Kcell’s Q3 revenue drops 13.6% in Kazakhstan

ALMATY, OCT. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kcell, Kazakhstan’s largest telecoms operator, posted a 13.6% drop in revenues for Q3 compared to the same period in 2015, blaming it on tough economic conditions.

Arti Ots, Kcell’s CEO, said, though, that the Kazakh economy now appears to show signs of a timid recovery.

“Kazakhstan has started to see some encouraging signs of macro recovery, with an increase in oil prices. There have also been some signals that consumer price inflation is easing and currency levels are stabilising,” Mr Ots said in a statement.

Kcell’s quarterly revenues, which stood at 36.9b tenge ($111m), were up compared to Q2 but still lower than 2015. The tenge lost 50% of its value in the second half of 2015, destroying people’s confidence in the economy.

Still, Kazakhstan’s competitive telecoms market remains tough.

“We delivered a second successive quarterly increase in service revenue and reported net growth in our subscriber base, although the economic and market environment remained challenging and we saw further year- on-year declines in revenue and profit,” Mr Ots said.

Fierce competition and price cutting have characterised Kazakhstan’s telecoms market recently.

Kcell’s subscribers grew by 1% from January to 9.9m, still below the near 11m that the company had serviced, and expenditure per subscriber declined. In Q3, the average user spent less than 1,200 tenge ($3.6) per month, down 2.7% from last year.

Sweden’s Telia Company owns a 62% stake in Kcell. It wants to sell off its assets in Central Asia after a corruption scandal involving its unit in neighbouring Uzbekistan.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

China’s Huawei to roll out 4G in Azerbaijan

OCT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Chinese telecoms giant Huawei said it will roll out a 4G service in Azerbaijan’s exclave region of Nakhchivan, highlighting China’s growing business influence in the South Caucasus.

Separated from mainland Azerbaijan by a sliver of Armenian territory, Nakhchivan also borders Turkey and Iran.

The region, which spans 5,500 square km, roughly as big as Brunei, holds symbolic significance as the birthplace of Heydar Aliyev, first president of independent Azerbaijan and father of current leader Ilham Aliyev.

The animosity between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh region means that Nakhchivan has, effectively, been cut off from the rest of Azerbaijan. To power the region, Azerbaijan and Iran swap gas supplies.

This makes the deal with Huawei, and China’s influence, important for Nakhchivan.

“Now people living in most distant villages of Nakhchivan can enjoy a high-speed internet,” China’s Global Post quoted Vasif Talibov, speaker of Nakhchivan’s autonomous parliament, as saying.

No details of the cost of the deal, or whether Azerbaijan was paying for any of the 4G roll-out, were released.

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(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Telia’s losses in Uzbekistan grow

OCT. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Sweden’s Telia Company posted a net loss of $908m in Q3 2016 due to the settlement of court cases involving corrupt practices in Uzbekistan. Telia, which paid $1.4b to settle claims by US and Dutch courts in September, said that the court case is not yet closed, hinting of possible further claims. The company was accused of bribing Gulnara Karimova, daughter of late- Uzbek President Islam Karimov, to win telecoms licences.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Kazakh President’s grandson says he bought 49% stake in Transtelecom in 2015

ALMATY, OCT. 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — After 18 months of rumours, Nurali Aliyev, grandson of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, revealed himself to be the mystery buyer of a 49% stake in Kazakhstan’s telecoms network, Transtelecom.

The 8.9b tenge ($48m at the time) sale was agreed in May 2015, but the identity of the buyer was shielded from the public. At the time of the deal, Mr Aliyev was the deputy mayor of Astana. Kazakhstan’s state-owned railway company, Temir Zholy still holds a 51% stake in Transtelecom.

In an interview with the pro-government Tengrinews website, Mr Aliyev confirmed rumours on opposition websites that he had bought the stake.

“One of the reasons for my departure from the government service was the acquisition of a 49% stake in Transtelecom as part of the privatisation programme,” he said.

Mr Aliyev, 31, quit as deputy mayor of Astana in March this year, saying that he wanted to concentrate on his business commitments. He had held the position since Dec. 2013.

In Kazakhstan, it is fairly com- monplace for senior government members to own stakes in businesses.

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(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)

Kazakh telecom profits grow

SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s national telecoms operator Kazakhtelecom said in a financial statement that its operating profit grew 13.2% in H1 2016, compared to the same period last year. Revenues increased by 4.9%, mainly due to higher prices for its telecoms networks that it rents out to other companies. The merger of Altel, part of Kazakhtelecom, and Tele2 helped overall profits, which more than doubled in the first six months of the year.

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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)

FDI grow in Georgia

SEPT. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Georgia in the first half of 2016 grew by 10% compared to the same period last year. In Q2, FDI declined by 3.8% to $445m. Azerbaijan, Britain and the Czech Republic were the three largest investors in Georgia in Q2. FDI in the transport and communications sector made up more than a third of the total inflow.

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(News report from Issue No. 295, published on Sept. 9 2016)

Telia sells Tajik assets

SEPT. 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Sweden’s Telia Company sold its 60% stake in Tcell to the Aga Khan Fund, which owned 40% of the Tajik telecoms operator . Telia said it will earn $39m from the sale. The sale is in line with Telia’s goal of dropping stakes in companies it owned in Central Asia and the South Caucasus after investigations into corruption practices in the region were launched.

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(News report from Issue No. 295, published on Sept. 9 2016)

Beeline and Kcell join forces in Kazakhstan

AUG. 31 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kcell and Beeline, two of the largest mobile operators in Kazakhstan, signed a network sharing agreement that will allow their users to access 4G/LTE services across the country. Kazakhstan liberalised access to the 4G network earlier this year. Swedish Telia Company controls Kcell, while Russia’s VimpelCom owns Beeline.

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(News report from Issue No. 294, published on Sept. 2 2016)

Russia’s MTS sells Uzbek business

AUG. 5 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian mobile phone operator MTS, which is listed on the New York stock exchange, said it had sold its business in Uzbekistan to the Uzbek government. The US authorities have been investigating alleged corruption at MTS’s Uzbek operations. MTS owned a 50% stake in UMS, the country’s third largest mobile operator. Various governments have launched a series of investigations into corruption by mobile operators in Uzbekistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 292, published on Aug. 12 2016)

Uzbekistan extends Beeline licence

JULY 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Uzbek government extended the telecoms licence for Beeline Uzbekistan until 2031. Beeline Uzbekistan said the extension of the licence was a key step for one of the company’s most important markets. Beeline Uzbekistan is a subsidiary of Amsterdam-based Russian telecoms company VimpelCom. In the past few months, VimpelCom has been fined millions of dollars for paying bribes to enter the Uzbek mobile market.

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(News report from Issue No. 291, published on Aug. 1 2016)