Nigerian Times

9 Nov 2011 08:00 Africa/Lagos Africa Now the World's Second Largest Mobile Market, Reports GSMA CAPE TOWN, South Africa, November 9, 2011/PRNewswire/ -- New GSMA report calls on African governments to allocate spectrum and lower taxes to enable mobile network expansion across Africa,generating major economic and social growth AfricaCom: The GSMA today announced that Africa is now the world's second largest mobile market by connections after Asia, and the fastest growing mobile market in the world. According to the new GSMA Africa Mobile Observatory 2011 report*, Africa achieved this milestone as mobile penetration reached 649 million connections in Q4 2011 (having first exceeded 50 per cent mobile penetration in 2010). Over the past five years, the number of subscribers across Africa has grown by almost 20 per cent each year and will reach more than 735 million by the end of 2012. Ninety-six per cent of subscriptions are pre-paid with voice services currently dominating, althou...

MOBILE WORLD LIVE GSMA Announces mFarmer Initiative Fund mAgri Programme Aims to Benefit 2 Million Farmers in Developing Countries by 2013 PR Newswire CAPE TOWN, South Africa, June 9, 2011 CAPE TOWN, South Africa, June 9, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The GSMA, the body that represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, today announced at the inaugural mAgri Working Group in Cape Town, the launch of the mFarmer Initiative Fund, supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Fund will encourage mobile communications service providers, in partnership with other public and private sector agriculture organisations, to use mobile communications to provide information and advisory services to smallholder farmers in developing countries living on under US$2 per day. The mFarmer Initiative Fund, which is part of the GSMA's Mobile Agriculture (mAgri) Programme, will be available over a period of two years. "There are over 2.3 billion people living on less than...

President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria on BlackBerry mobile phone, the most popular smart phone in the most populous country in Africa with over 90 million users of GSM phones. . 10 Years of GSM in Nigeria • The Global System of Mobile Communications (GSM) was introduced into Nigeria in August 2001 with only 400, 000 lines, and a dismal 0.4 teledensity. But today the active lines are over 90 million with a teledensity of 64.16! • Nigeria is ranked as the largest and fastest growing telecom market in Africa and among the top ten fastest growing telecom markets in the world. • The leading GSM operators in Nigeria are, MTN, Airtel, Etisalat, Globacom, Starcomms, Mtel, Visafone, Zoommobile, Multilinks MTN Kiosk • The Nigerian telecom industry has attracted over $18 billion in private sector investments, including direct foreign investment, contributing over N300 billion to the coffers of the Nigerian government through frequency spectrum sales and the annual revenue from mobile services i...

Mobile Communication: Umuodagu Ntu and excruciating poor network ~ By Nwaorgu Faustinus The advent of Mobile telecommunication industry in Nigeria is traceable to 1999 and present democratic government. Prior to 1999, telephone be it landline or walkie-talkie was seen as one of the rare luxuries of the rich. But the coming of mobile telecommunication operators changed the situation for the better as every Tom, Dick and Harry have accesses to one or two handsets. That is why its arrival and operation was seen as a great achievement of the former President of Nigeria, Chief. Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration. Initially, MTN, the first mobile telecommunication company was given license to operate followed by ECONET which metamorphosed into Vmobile first, then Zain and now Airtel. The last mobile telephony network but not the least is Etisalat. Apart from these four major telephony networks, there are also others that are regionally based. Though the impacts of these four major mobile net...