Airtel is the largest cellular service provider in India, with more than 135 million subscriptions as of May 2010, the world’s third-largest, single-country mobile operator and sixth-largest integrated telecom operator.

New Delhi, June 8, 2010: Bharti Airtel Limited (“Bharti”) today took a giant step towards becoming a global emerging market telecom operator by completing the acquisition of Zain Group’s (“Zain”) mobile operations in 15 countries across Africa for an enterprise valuation of USD10.7 billion. With this acquisition, Airtel will become the first Indian brand to go truly global with a footprint that covers over 1.8 billion people. Bharti also becomes a major Indian MNC with operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa with a customer base of over 180 million.

The transaction is the largest ever cross-border deal in emerging markets and will result in combined revenues of over USD 12.4 billion and EBITDA of over USD 4.7 billion, based on the last audited results. Bharti is now among the five largest mobile operators in the world.

Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti said, “We are delighted at the closure of this transformational deal for India and Bharti. We would like to express our deep gratitude and thank the governments of all the fifteen countries as well as the government of India for their overwhelming support to this landmark event. This will further strengthen the historic Indo-Africa economic & social ties and provide a big boost to South-South cooperation.

Bharti, which has been working towards its vision of expansion into Africa, is committed to contributing to the growth of telecom in the region by taking networks deep into these countries and providing affordable services that touch the common man. We also promise our customers in Africa a superior brand experience and a portfolio of innovative products & services.

We would like to welcome over 6500 talented and highly qualified professionals to the Bharti family and look forward to working with them to take these operations from strength to strength. We would like to thank the Zain team for their professionalism, which enabled us to close this transaction in a record time.”

Mr. Asaad Al-Banwan, Chairman, Zain, said “We wholeheartedly wish Bharti Airtel great success in continuing the development of telecommunications across the African continent, and we are confident that the people of Africa will welcome such a committed and reputable telecom powerhouse.”

Bharti’s acquisition of Zain’s African mobile services operations covers 15 countries with a total customer base of over 42 million. The total population base covered is over 450 million with telecom penetration of approximately 32%. The countries in which Bharti has acquired the operations are – Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Zain is the market leader in 10 of the 15 countries and second in 4 countries.

Source

It looks like we will soon be saying “Hello” to Airtel Nigeria. Sigh. Looks too like the 4th Revision of my Guide to Mobile Internet in Nigeria won’t be too long coming as well.

The 3rd revision of my popular ebook, Guide to Mobile Internet in Nigeria (first published in June 2009), is now available for download. This time, a CDMA network, Starcomms makes a debut in the guide, plus updates on Etisalat and other minor revisions.

The size of the ebook has also been reduced. Now, its a smaller 1.25mb in size, compared to 14.9mb for the 2nd Revision. My colleagues and I are convinced that the size of the book limited downloads somewhat.

The previous revision was downloaded 972 times. In all, my Guide to Mobile Internet in Nigeria has recorded over 3, 000 downloads since June 2009 till today, June 8, 2010.

Download your free copy

“Bharti Airtel is pleased to announce that the entire financing requirement of $8.3 billion for the proposed acquisition of Zain’s African unit (Zain Africa BV) has been successfully tied up,” the company said in a statement. “Financing was oversubscribed, with major international banks committing to underwrite the total amount,” the statement added.

If Airtel is acquiring Zain Africa’s assets, then we can expect that Zain Nigeria will be undergoing another name change sooon. Sounds familiar; right?

Read the full news item

Sounds odd. Zain Africa is not an autonomous unit apart from the global Zain operations. If Zain global is selling, surely wouldn’t this affect Zain Africa? But the CEO seems to know this. Hear him:

Zain Africa isn’t for sale. We are focused on our objective of becoming a top-10 mobile player globally by 2011. There is absolutely no lack of focus in Africa. There is always great appetite for expansion…

Whether shareholders decide to sell is entirely up to them. Shareholder matters are outside the scope of my responsibility.

Ahem. Looks like Zain Africa is up for sale. The last time we checked, that’s what the shareholders said.

Sources: The Punch newspaper; All Africa

This used to be the case. Now, with voice and data roaming on mobile networks, it is fast becoming a thing of the past.

When my family and I left Nigeria on friday, thanks to seamless roaming on both MTN and Zain networks, we have stayed in touch on our regular GSM lines where each of those networks have coverage. For MTN, we had a signal most of the time and encountered black spots every now and then. This was because MTN has networks active in Benin, and Ghana.

On MTN, I received calls and SMS for free, and made calls at the same rate as subscribers on the host network pay. Unfortunately, data roaming did not work, so I was offline some time after we entered Benin till our arrival and settling down at Accra.

Zain data roaming worked once we got to Ghana, as there were no Zain networks in benin and Togo. My wife received calls for free as well and made calls to loved ones back home. As for data roaming on Zain, while there is GPRS/EDGE/3G/3.5G coverage, her Zain Nigeria line won’t even indicate the presence of that.

PS: The Zain Nigeria website says that data roaming is available in Ghana on “Tigo (Millicom)”. Why not on Zain Ghana?

I purchased a Zain Ghana SIM for mobile internet use. It came pre-activated for internet. All I had to do was load airtime, enter the settings manually, subscribe to a plan, and I was good to go. EDGE coverage is strong at our location, and I am posting this on Zain Ghana internet.

Our holiday spot, Atlantic Resort, has a Wi-fi hotspot. I will be subscribing as soon as I can get my lazy butts off the bed and out of the chalet.

This is Yomi Adegboye reporting live from Ghana for MobilityNigeria.com.

However, if you are currently subscribed to an internet bundle plan, you may want to stay away from those Joli migration codes for now. Migrating to Joli de-activates/cancels any existing internet bundle plans you may be subscribed to. Without notice. Yes; whatever you paid for the bundle package is gone. But that’s not all.

Because the bundle is now cancelled, if you have any available airtime, your line keeps connecting, eating up your airtime without your being aware of it.

Lastly, internet bundles cannot be activated on the Jolli platform. Joli subscribers can only enjoy pay-as-you-go internet at 15 kobo per kb. Well, at least till Zain sort out how to get it done.

Bad. Very bad.

A note of caution if you do choose to migrate to the Joli package: While it may be tempting to switch in order to enjoy lower call rates, also note that there is currently no way to switch back, if you are not satisfied. The migration is currently on a no-return basis.

The package costs N15, 000 per month. all you have to do is load N15, 000 worth of airtime, and then dial *141*712*5# to activate the plan. Once activated, the subscriber has one month access to unlimited internet access.

Speed and performance depends on location, as Zain 3G is very limited at present. But outside of 3G coverage, subscribers will be able to browse via EDGE (180-240 kbps theoretical maximum speed), or GPRS (70 kbps theoretical maximum speed).

This is a good move by Zain. Now, if experience is anything to go by, we should expect the others to photocopy and join the unlimited bundle bandwagon. Which is not a bad thing at all. The consumer wins!

Ahem! In the meantime, we hope that the guys at Zain are working at providing wider 3G coverage. This is 2009, guys, and crawly GPRS is killing… slowly…

Another re-branding nightmare for Zain Nigeria?

History: Econet Wireless to Vodacom to Vmobile to Celtel to Zain
Future: Vivendi (?)

If this deal goes through, shall we hope that Vivendi won’t opt to sell out again in another two years?

One thing must be said though, it has been a surprise – and a pleasant one too – how the 0802/0808 network has managed to provide relatively stable services (at least with voice) inspite of the constant corporate skin changes.

Related Article: Another Re-Branding Exercise Looming at 0802/0808?

• 2nd Revision: Mar. 2010
• 1st Revision: Feb. 2010

A revised version is now available for download

My problem with MTN’s voice servicce has more to do with billing than the quality of calls. A few weeks ago, I noticed that any airtime that was left on my line was being deducted sometime after 10pm on a daily basis. As I do not load much credit on the line, I overlooked it initially. But things came to a head when on a particular day I had loaded N750 and barely used N150, the N600 left on my line disappeared shortly after 10pm. I only discovered this when I wanted to make a call.

I was annoyed, to say the least. As I could not get through to Customer Care by voice, I got their (Customer Care) email address from their website and fired off an email. A few days later, I receiveed a reply that said there was nothing wrong with my line and that the credit had not been wrongly deducted.

At this same time, I noticed that while browsing pay-as-you-go my line was not being billed immediately.

For example, if I went online and downloaded 100kb at 11am, my airtime would remain the same, giving the false impression that I was browsing free. Much later in the day, I was eventually billed for the internet access. This prevented me from doing a proper reconciliation of data and voice costs.

Funny enough, a day after they sent me the mail, the whole billing issue stopped. But a week later, it started again. Since then, I have learnt to load the amount of airtime that I need/can use before 10pm. Anytime after that, there is the risk of my account balance reading N0.00.

The data issues are the same recurring ones and it is quite annoying
that they continue unabated. I am currently subscribed to the Night
plan (10pm – 5am) with a 3GB cap but I have barely used 1GB with
barely a week left before it expires. When the network is up, it is
superb most of the time but the sporadic nature of the downtimes are
quite annoying. Moreso it appears that it seems to happen when I have some urgent work to do or deadline to meet.

I believe the introduction of a dedicated data customer care number/email would help in bringing these issues to their notice and aid the quick resolution. I would understand downtimes of a couple of hours but when it runs into 8-10 hours as happened a couple of days ago, that’s unacceptable.

Sadly enough, I dont have a back up plan at the moment. Not that there are any appealing options anyway.

1. Etisalat EDGE is way too expensive
2. Zain 3G is non-existent
3. Glo is trouble laden, and
4. My experience with Starcomms is a story for another day

For now, I am not adventurous enough to spring for any other ISP at this point in time.

I am fed up – and that is putting it mildly.

Is anyone out there having the same problems?