Mobinil CEO Yves Gauthier discussed the latest developments regarding the company’s debt restructuring process. Gauthier also tackled the status of and challenges facing the telecom market in Egypt.
In terms of mobile subscribers, Mobinil represents roughly 30% of what we call the AMENA region, Orange Middle East, Africa and Asia. Mainly in Orange’s operations in Africa, Mobinil’s part in the African market is 30%. The population of Egypt is growing by roughly 1.5 million per year. For that, it’s a very promising market and obviously Orange will continue to invest and focus on this market.
In total, there are currently more than 100 million subscribers in Egypt, and in the future, it is likely that the data traffic will grow very fast, and we will need more frequencies. We will need frequencies of what we call LTE (4G technology) which is in the 2.6 MHz, but also in the 700 MHz range.
If the government will put new licences on sale for LTE, then probably Mobinil will increase the capital more to buy new licences, if not then it will be less. It depends on what will happen next year. It’s not yet clear what we are walking on to increase the capital, we have numbers but we cannot disclose these because they might change.
The 2016 budget has not yet been finalised. Mobinil is currently in discussions preparing for the budget, and it will be finalised around November 2015. Usually, the operator invests between EGP 2.2bn and EGP 2.5bn annually.
Regarding spectrum, what Mobinil requires is more frequencies, in 3G or 4G. If you have more frequencies, you give more space to carry more data and that is exactly what is happening today. The data traffic is growing very fast, its growing by 100% every year in Egypt. That means double the traffic each year. If we deploy 4G, customers who are migrating from 3G to 4G will free the space for more usage in 3G. It’s like the voice calls, you have the voice in 3G and 2G. Nowadays, the 2G is not saturated because you have 30% of the voice which is on 3G. For the data, it’s the same, today 90% of the data is 3G and 10% is 2G. If we put 4G, you migrate the one which will use the 4G terminal, and you will have more space on 3G.
The countries which are not on 4G yet are Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. But with a country like Egypt, with its high population, the government should have a frequency plan for the future. We know that broadband will help the development of the country.
Source: http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2015/09/08/mobinil-plans-to-increase-capital-next-year-ceo/