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Batelco eyes North African market

Alex Kayle
By Alex Kayle, Senior portals journalist
Johannesburg, 09 Jun 2010

Batelco eyes North African market

Bahrain Telecommunications (Batelco) plans to expand in North Africa and Asia as it seeks to increase customers by about 50% this year, reports Arabian Business.

Batelco CEO, Peter Kaliaropoulos, says: “We had 6.5 million customers at the end of the first quarter, and our objective is to reach 10 million customers at the end of this year.”

Middle Eastern telephone service providers are expanding outside their home countries into markets with lower mobile penetration rates.

MTN Uganda boosts MobileMoney

MTN Uganda, in collaboration with Fundamo, an enterprise mobile financial services platform, plans to reach more than two million users by the end of 2010, and 3.5 million by 2012, states TMCnet.

Over 11.8 million transactions have been made through MTN Uganda since the roll-out of MobileMoney in the region.

There are more than 1 600 MTN MobileMoney service outlets in Uganda, from which 60% of the transfers made are to recipients in rural areas which do not have access to banks.

Zim bullish about mobile growth

Zimbabwe's government-owned mobile firm NetOne will spend $45 million to more than double subscribers after receiving a loan from Export-Import Bank of China, says Reuters Africa.

NetOne is the smallest of the country's three mobile networks, which include Econet Wireless and Telecel, a unit of Egypt's Orascom Telecom.

"The loan will significantly impact on service and quality. We hope that with this provision, we will be able to cover the whole country," says NetOne's managing director, Reward Kangai.

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