Telecom Market Awaits for ‘Bigger Shares’ After Universal License Launch; Mobinil CEO
Mobinil seekd for listing more shares in the stock market
“2.5 billion pounds our investments in the local market” CEO Said
International arbitration is an available option if the universal license would be unfair
“I think that the political situation after the 30th revolution and the political situation have an obvious impact on the economic situation so the revenue of the telecommunication sector has been affected, and the political circumstances have a direct impact on the tourism average which has an effect on the roaming revenue for the telecommunication industry ” Yves Gauthier Mobinil CEO Said.
He said that ” Mobinil is one of the best mobile services providers in the Egyptian market especially on the area of customer experience and it is obvious that its network is very good” and added ” according to NTRA statistics Mobinil has been the best mobile provider for the last two years and I wish that we would attract more customers through these services”
Regarding the biggest issue in the communication industry now “the universal license” Gauthier thinks that the communication service is “a cake” and it would be good to have a bigger cake after launching the universal license or having a bigger part of it and for having a bigger part without getting others share, the cake should be bigger so that everyone would be happy with their share in the cake.
He confirms that his company wouldn’t go to the international arbitration if the license would be fair and Mobinil is “happy” but he insisted that if it would be unfair and would affect their work and operations in the market they would have to “defend for their position”
Mobinil has to list more of its shares on the stock market as it has only 1.08% for free circulation and Gauthier confirms that Mobinil intends to have more shares in the stock market but the current economic circumstances are not very stable to have such a decision and the company needs more visibility before listing more shares.
He thought that the shareholders need to know about the market and the company’s plans which are waiting for the new shape of the market after launching the universal license.
About the new spectrum mobile providers have got via NTRA he thought that having a new spectrum would affect the company services especially broadband area that needs huge bandwidth to provide customers with good speed and allows them to use internet and broadband services, as the internet usages has a huge growth rates nowadays.
On the other hand we are waiting for new bandwidth spectrum in 2015 to provide customers with broadband services.
About Mobinil investments he said that “the company invests between 2-2.5 billion pounds every year and it depends on the currency price as the investments are allocated in US dollars or in Euro and maybe it would reach the 3 billion averages.”
These investments are used in corporate area, traffic usage and network modelization .
It is hard to say how much of these investments is to voice services and what is the percentage of data allocations in our budget as we spend them on developing the network infrastructure but on the other hand it is obvious that the internet traffic is growing year by year so we intend to have more investments in this sector.
About the bank loans he said that ” we always have discussions with local banks to have loans repayment depending on other loans so we have now negotiations with several local banks to have a 2.5 billion pounds as a loan and on the other hand we have fixed investments which are allocated from the group not the bank loans.
Mobinil has announced the financial results of the third quarter of 2013 with 403 million pounds losses. the CEO thinks that these losses are because of the accelerate depreciation as it has to renew its infrastructure, and confirms that it has very high revenues from operations.
He thinks that in 2015 the company would reach its breakeven point and make a profit margin again after 2 years of losses on its financial results.
New services such as mobile payment and AVL have been launched in the Egyptian market and the CEO of Mobinil thinks that they would have their impact on the telecommunication industry as the mobile payment allows cooperation between the banking sector and communication sector and on the other hand it could help people to facilitate money transfer and he asked the government to allow more retails and distributors to provide the services not only the company’s official shops.
He said that “African countries such as Kenya has 5% of their GDP from mobile payment services. So, that would have a real impact on the Egyptian economy if we have more payment services depending on mobile”
About the AVL he said that a lot of companies are expected to use it depending on Data SIM to track their cars and vehicles but Mobinil doesn’t have any contacts or agreements with other companies to provide them with the service.
On the area of Broadband Gauthier said that that the company is going forward in the mobile broadband services and wish it would do better depending on fiber optics infrastructure instead of micro waves.
On the other hand the fixed broadband needs more fiber optics and Mobinil needs to have the ability to have its own infrastructure not only depending on Telecom Egypt services. So, that would be a good reason to have a share in the broadband strategy the ministry of communication has announced depending on Mobinil , its ADSL arm link DSL and orange services as a group
