But never underestimate the human capacity for delusion. Here’s a despot who’s managed at various times to pocket America and Europe with après-moi-le-déluge talk of the need for his rule, bought off several smaller African states, cocooned himself for more than four decades with fawning acolytes, murdered with impunity, sired with abandon, enriched himself beyond measure and — like any self-respecting modern tyrant — doled out the cell phone companies to his kids. Through all this he’s survived.

Our politicians just tax mobile operators in multiple ways. The truly despotic take the whole company. But then, does it create incentives to reduce rent extraction?

We wrote about the Revolutionary Guard owning mobile operators in Iran. I asked people in the Iranian regulatory authority about the challenges this posed to even handed regulation. They seemed for the most part unaware of the ownership of the operators. Some things, you’d rather not know.

We’d welcome comments on mobile operators owned by despots and their children.

This is a case of the market responding to what the customer wants in the face of regulatory failure, or a work around of the type we discuss in our book. From 1999, the Telecom Regulatory Commission has been considering a shift to Calling Party Pays, but has balked for various reasons. In 2004, the decision was taken and a news conference was announced. Just hours before the news conference, the politically appointed Secretary to the Ministry/Chairman of the TRC, unilaterally and possibly illegally overrode the Commission decision, saying he cannot be responsible for allowing this decision to go through just before the election. He kicked it to a public hearing. The public hearing committee counted the NUMBER of submissions pro and con, and decided that the public was against CPP even though it was obvious that the con submissions were based on a common template and were orchestrated by a union. So Sri Lanka remained RPP, while both India and Pakistan, which started the process later, converted and gave the customers what they wanted. Regulatory failure caused by political interference and staff incompetence.

The Tigo action comes in the context of a full-blown price war initiated by “No. 2″ operator Mobitel and the response last week by the market leader Dialog. For the last few years, everyone has been inching toward ending RPP. No RPP was being charged from postpaid customers for all practical purposes. The Mobitel salvo ended it for government employees and pensioners a few weeks back. The Dialog response last week ended it for all, but asked for a one-time fee to get the benefit. Now Tigo has written the script for Mobitel’s response and also perhaps for Hutch and Bharti Airtel Lanka.

The people have been given what they want. But the regulator still has work to do. The fixed networks should not get the free ride on the mobile networks they have enjoyed for the past so many years. Completion of a call originated in a fixed network on a mobile network causes costs on the mobile network. From the time mobile was introduced in Sri Lanka in 1989, the fixed networks have collected the retail price of the call (usually the higher price of a national call) and KEPT IT ALL, without giving one cent to the terminating network. The excuse was that the mobile networks could charge for terminating the calls under RPP.

On the other hand when a call to a fixed network is originated on a mobile network, the mobile operator PAYS A TERMINATION CHARGE to the fixed network. In 2007, for example, Sri Lanka Telecom earned LKR 593 million in such payments. A Sri Lankan fixed network operator will pay termination fees to other fixed operators; it will pay termination fees to foreign fixed operators; it will even pay termination fees to foreign mobile operators. The only operators it will not pay termination fees to are Sri Lankan mobile operators.

Now that consumer demands and competition have ended RPP, the mobile operators are providing termination services to fixed operators for free, cross-subsidizing it from origination services. This is wrong.

It is high time that this anomaly is remedied. Sri Lankan mobile operators are offering some of the lowest mobile prices in the world. The least the regulator can do is to ensure that they are treated fairly.

Besides, by January 1, all mobile operators should start exchanging their lists of stolen devices, the official said. 

Conatel is also asking all operators to have in place by July 1 an equipment identity register (EIR) system to identify stolen phones when users try to activate them.  

The EIR platforms cost around US$500,000, Martínez said. 

Paraguay’s mobile operators are Telecel, a unit of Luxembourg-based Millicom International Cellular, Hola, which is backed by Japanese investors, Telecom
Argentina’s unit Personal and Mexican giant América Móvil’s CTI Móvil.

In-Stat, however, reports that “mobile” doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as “cellular.”  

New technologies and business models are now under development that may threaten mobile operators’ ability to profit from video content, the high-tech market research firm says. Read more…

The €3.6 (US$4.9) billion figure is based on an assumed total of 2,400 billion text messages being sent over 2007 – 600 billion in Q1 multiplied by four. If 1.5% of mobile subscribers send one money transfer text message per month, with an additional charge of €3.50 to cover the service, operators can generate an average extra revenue of €0.0015 for every text message sent on their network. Read more.

A new report has revealed that monthly ARPU is declining globally, but the gap between operators with the world’s highest and lowest monthly ARPU remains huge.

The research study from analyst firm TeleGeography showed that based on a data set of more than 130 mobile operators, ARPU fell by an average of 6.4% between September 2005 and September 2006.

“Not surprisingly, providers with higher ARPU tended to be in countries with relatively high incomes — predominately in Western Europe and the US,” the report stated.

Surprisingly, tiny BTCI, Turkmenistan’s dominant mobile operator, topped the rankings, with ARPU of $83, far ahead of any other operators. At the opposite extreme lies Bangladesh’s Banglalink, which generated monthly revenues of only $3.30 per subscriber, the report said.

In saturated markets, lower voice tariffs and declining minutes of use contributed to the decline in ARPUs, whereas in fast-growing emerging markets the addition of incrementally less wealthy users to the subscriber base is the main cause behind the fall.

“A trait shared by most high ARPU companies is a low percentage of pre-paid users and high 3G subscriber growth. Growing data revenues are helping these providers to offset declining voice revenue,” commented Mark Gibson, an analyst at TeleGeography.

The gap between high and low ARPU providers showed no sign of narrowing, the study claimed. “In fact, the five carriers with the lowest revenue per  subscriber experienced far more rapid declines in ARPU than the five carriers at the top of the ranking. However, falling ARPU were offset by dramatic subscriber growth: the five low-ARPU carriers increased their total revenues by 175%.”

Read article at telecomasia.net

Our friend and colleague Abu Saeed Khan is reporting on a major development on these lines from the GSM Congress in Barcelona:

:: bdnews24.com ::

Spearheaded by a special group of 19 mobile operators with networks in over 100 countries and representing over 600 million customers, GSMA believes the programme could double the number of recipients of international remittances to more than 1.5 billion, while helping to quadruple the size of the international remittances market to more than one trillion dollars by 2012.

To combine the strengths of the mobile and financial ecosystems, mobile operators are partnering with banks at a local or regional level, while GSMA is setting up a pilot project with MasterCard Worldwide, a global payments leader whose cards and network provide international authorisation, clearing and settlement.

GSMA and MasterCard, which has a 25,000 member-bank network, plan to pilot a global hub that will link together national markets and the local payment systems run by mobile operators in partnership with those local banks.

The hub will enable migrant workers to transfer money and notify their families via mobile phone.

“The creation of a global hub will enable the mobile networks, which now cover more than 80 percent of the world’s population, to offer the world’s burgeoning migrant population a convenient way to securely and cost-effectively transfer money to their families back in their home countries,” said Rob Conway, CEO of GSMA.

“The programme will resonate with governments because it makes the international payment market more transparent, encourages financial inclusion, reduces crime and boosts the flow of hard currency into their countries,” added Conway.