Page 110 - SAMENA Trends - September 2019

ARTICLE SAMENA TRENDS

ARTICLE

Digital CSP Roadmap for the Middle East

Digitalization impacts practically every
aspect of the business, be it payment
instruments, digital services partner eco-

system, sales and distribution channels
and most importantly subscribers or
should we say consumers of telco and
non-telco services.

The Middle East provides a study in contrast. While the GCC
states and Northern Africa have subscriber penetration of 77%
and 74% respectively, in the emerging countries subscriber
penetration is as low as 48%. Similarly, while smartphone
penetration in GCC countries is as high as 74%, it is merely
49% in North Africa and 39% in emerging economies. Gulf
Cooperation Council Countries have embraced digital services.
UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait have higher contribution of digital
services (Bahrain - 8% of GDP). Countries like Egypt, Lebanon
will soon catch up and increase digitization of the region.
GSMA forecasts that by 2025, North Africa and the emerging
economies would have caught up with the GCC countries with
regards to smartphone and subscriber penetration.

The coming saturation in the MENA telecom space is already
witnessing price war, which will eventually lead to the
inevitable commodification of telecom core services. Due to
this commodification, the revenue forecast is very modest
for the region – a CAGR of 1.8% between 2017 -2025 (GSMA
Mobile Economy, Middle East 2018). As the decoupling
Atul Madan between the operator traffic and revenue becomes stronger in
Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Services time, telecom companies will be under tremendous pressure
Comviva Technologies to stay relevant in a rapidly changing world.
Some of the key current and future MENA telecom challenges
are:

110 SEPTEMBER 2019