As predicted, the Budget Telecom Network model is reaching Africa. Predictably, management of the operators who were living the quiet life, are running to regulators to be rescued from horrors, actual price competition: ARPU meanwhile declined at a similar rate across both regions – down 3% in Western Europe and down 3.29% in Africa. The African slide was triggered in part by price wars in a number of markets, particularly in Kenya, Tanzania and Egypt. Monthly mobile ARPU in Africa stood at $10 in the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to $10.
We didn’t quite think we’d be generating news at the conference, but apparently some of what was said was truly newsworthy. Capital investment in Sri Lanka’s telecom infrastructure has plummeted amid a price war and high taxation which will crimp expansion in the future and broadband roll out in the island, top telecom operators said. “Before the price war each operator was spending about 150 to 200 million (US dollars) a year in capital expenditure,” Dumindra Ratnayake, head of Tigo Sri Lanka said at a forum organized in Colombo by LirneAsia, a regional policy research body. “This year all operators put together may have invested about 150 million.”