OTHER TELECOM INVESTMENTS & ACTIVITIES BY THE GROUP
Saudi
Oger (along with its affiliate OMNIA) indirectly
controls 45.76% of Inquam Limited (“Inquam”),
a company incorporated in the Cayman Islands, through
a joint venture with Qualcomm (the US company renowned
for its CDMA global leadership), which latter also
controls 45.76% of Inquam.
Inquam focuses on specialist mobile technology and
services and deploys a variety of technologies depending
on the differing needs of each particular market.
For instance, Inquam, through its Dolphin affiliates
owns networks using TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio)
technology.
In Romania, through its affiliate Telemobil, Inquam
has successfully deployed a CDMA2000 operation,
and is currently deploying a CDMA2000 network in
Portugal (both Greenfield operations).
Romania
Inquam purchased Telemobil in October 2000. In early
December 2001, Telemobil launched Zapp Mobile services
using CDMA technology. Telemobil, previously called
“Telefònica Romania” was the
first mobile telephony operator in Romania.
In 1993, the company launched a nationwide NMT 450
service and had a monopoly until 1997. Immediately
after its acquisition by Inquam, Telemobil started
to upgrade its network with state-of-the-art CDMA2000
technology, developed by Qualcomm and Lucent. Currently
Telemobil services cover around 80 cities and towns
in addition to a large number of communes and villages
and the major motorways of the country. Telemobil
recently completed Phase 2 of its 1X RTT network
rollout (305 BTSs) enabling it to cover 85% of the
Romanian urban population and to strongly establish
the Zapp brand in the market.
Telemobil’s subscriber
base grew more than 4 fold from around 15,000 in
April 2002 to over 65,000 at the end of 2002 and
it reached more than 180,000 by the end of 2003
(close to 180% year-on-year growth). Telemobil’s
innovative marketing and products have allowed the
company to achieve significant penetration in a
highly competitive market. The company was able
to maintain its 30% market share of new additions
in the post-paid market (Telemobil does not offer
pre-paid products), competing head-to-head with
three other mobile operators, including Orange and
Connex (a Vodafone subsidiary).
Telemobil’s strategy regarding developing
and providing products and services for under-served
market segments such as SOHOs (Small Office Home
Office) and SMEs (Small and Medium Entreprises)
has been very successful in building market share.
Today, these segments represent 80% of Telemobil’s
gross additions. Telemobil has also focused on providing
innovative fixed wireless and wireless products
to the Romanian market and around 10% of its customers
use data only services.
Today, Telemobil is a well-established mobile operator
in Romania with 530 employees, renowned for its
innovation in providing creative mobile voice and
data solutions. The company is currently going through
the 3rd Phase of its network deployment and is planning
to launch HDR (High Data Rate) services in April
2004, which will provide faster data service (up
to 2.4 MB per second).
Telemobil is playing a major role in the development
of business, trade and commerce in the country by
offering enterprise solutions to enable mobile commerce,
banking and just-in-time solutions. These are all
possible through web-enabled mobile devices offering
high-speed data.
Please visit www.zapp.ro
for more information.
Portugal
Inquam
purchased Radiomóvel in October 2001. Radiomóvel
is the main player of the Portuguese PAMR market
and offers dedicated mobile radio communication
services to business users.
Currently, Radiomóvel has approximately 8,000
subscribers who are using the company’s analogue
and TETRA network platforms. Given the shortcomings
of the existing networks, Radiomóvel intends
to build a cost efficient digital network to address
the PAMR professional segments, based on CDMA technology.
The company intends to follow a niche strategy providing
traditional PAMR services (such as push-to-talk,
group calls and dispatch services) as well as complementary
services such as high data speed and location-based
services for which there is a growing demand.
Today, with 120 sites acquired, Radiomóvel
has completed 92% of its site acquisition for the
first phase of the network deployment. Radiomóvel
has also completed civil works for 73 sites and
installed equipment on 52 sites. In parallel to
the network deployment, Inquam is also helping Radiomóvel
to bring its entire organization up to speed in
order to launch in the second quarter of 2004.
Please visit www.radiomovel.pt
for more information.