Etisalat targets Africa, Asia

Emirates Integrated Telecommunications aims to spend as much as $680 million this year to expand its network into Africa and Asia, reports Bloomberg.

Emirates Telecommunications, known as Etisalat, is targeting clients in markets with young and growing populations.

The telco says its active mobile subscribers jumped 51% from the third-quarter of last year to 3.14 million at the end of September. Third-quarter profit increased to $21.4 million.

IBM and Canonical have rolled out a personal computing software package for netbooks and thin client devices in Africa to leapfrog traditional PCs and proprietary software, says TMCnet.

This is the first cloud- and premise-based Linux netbook software package offered by IBM and Canonical.

Part of IBM's Smart Work Initiative is to provide affordable netbooks to the masses in Africa, to those who normally couldn't afford a traditional PC.

There are around 390 million cellphone subscribers, but with less than 45% penetration rate in Africa, states Live-PR.

According to the Africa Telecommunications Market Report 2009 by Companies and Markets, Africa's mobile communication is progressing exceedingly fast. However, the growth rate of the African economy was 5.7% in 2008, and the figure may drop to 3.2% in 2009 since global economic slowdown.

Economic improvement and the opening-up of the telecommunications industry will drive the rapid growth of Africa telecom industry. Mobile prepay users still account for the majority of Africa's subscribers.