{"id":8519,"date":"2012-03-02T14:49:22","date_gmt":"2012-03-02T12:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/03\/africa-offers-promise-and-peril-to-telcos\/"},"modified":"2012-03-02T14:49:22","modified_gmt":"2012-03-02T12:49:22","slug":"africa-offers-promise-and-peril-to-telcos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/africa-offers-promise-and-peril-to-telcos\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa offers promise and peril to telcos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Africa seen as last open emerging market for MA<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Nigeria, Libya, Tunisia offer opportunities<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>* Poverty, lack of infrastructure pose challenges<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By Leila Abboud and Kate Holton<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>BARCELONA, March 2 (Reuters) &#8211; Poor infrastructure,<br \/>\nfragmented markets and stiff competition mean Africa poses risks<br \/>\nas well as potential rewards for telecom operators hunting for<br \/>\ngrowth in countries like oil-rich Nigeria and post-revolution<br \/>\nLibya and Tunisia.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>With new cheaper smartphones set to drive sales, a growing<br \/>\ncorporate market, and the fact that most in Africa will use<br \/>\nmobile phones to access the Internet and do business, many<br \/>\noperators are seeking acquisition targets in the continent.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>France Telecom and Vodafone now present on<br \/>\nthe continent could expand, but they&#8217;d have to compete with new<br \/>\nemerging market players like Russia&#8217;s Vimpelcom, South<br \/>\nAfrica&#8217;s MTN or India&#8217;s Bharti Airtel.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Chinese companies, which already sell telecoms equipment in<br \/>\nAfrica, could move up the value chain by buying operators or<br \/>\nlicenses. In 2010, China Mobile lost a bidding war to Bharti<br \/>\nthat saw the Indian operator snap up telecom units in 16 African<br \/>\ncountries for $10.7 billion.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>But making money in Africa, one of the last remaining<br \/>\nemerging telecoms markets not yet sown up, has proven very<br \/>\ndifficult, as some of the existing players have discovered.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>* Africa seen as last open emerging market for MA * Nigeria, Libya, Tunisia offer opportunities * Poverty, lack of infrastructure pose challenges By Leila Abboud and Kate Holton BARCELONA, March 2 (Reuters) &#8211; Poor infrastructure, fragmented markets and stiff competition mean Africa poses risks as well as potential rewards for telecom operators hunting for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-8519","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}