Africa abolishes roaming as Zain’s One Network expands
400 million people across 12 countries now connected across Africa in one borderless mobile network covering an area more than twice the size of Europe
Zain subsidiary Celtel International announces the extension of ‘One Network’, the world’s first borderless mobile network in Africa to an additional six countries to include Burkina Faso, Chad, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan. These countries now join the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda in the network which was initially launched in September 2006 and has been expanded due to increased demand.
The extension of this technological break-through now offers the possibility for nearly half of Africa’s population to make calls at local rates across 12 countries throughout the continent. The expansion of One Network now means the world’s first borderless mobile phone network covers an area more than twice the size of the European Union. Since its launch more than two million people have already used the service.
Announcing the One Network expansion, Zain Group CEO Dr Saad Al Barrak said, “The innovation behind and the expansion of the world’s first borderless mobile phone network is a reflection of our dedication to the African continent and its people. We have revolutionarised telecommunications in Africa and we intend to roll out this service to more of our operations on the African continent and in the Middle East.”
Starting today, all Celtel’s customers both prepaid and postpaid in the 12 countries from East, Central and West Africa, will be able to use this service. They can move freely across geographic borders making calls and sms at local rates and receive incoming calls free of charge. They can top-up their prepaid phones with locally-bought airtime cards which can be bought at more than 500,000 points of sale. The One Network service is automatically activated upon crossing into any one of the other countries, with no prior registration required or sign up fee charged.
Commenting Tito Alai, Chief Commercial Officer Zain Group said “One Network is now available to more of our customers and makes it easier for them to communicate with their family, friends and business colleagues, making their life better.”
The extension of One Network is crucial to Zain’s strategy of ensuring that their customers in Africa are connected through one borderless network; an initiative that has not been done anywhere else in the world. Additionally One Network plays a crucial role in helping to promote and boost cross-border trade while driving economic growth in East, Central and West Africa.
Commenting about One Network in September 2006 the internationally respected magazine, The Economist, said ‘Celtel has, in effect, created a unified market of the kind that regulators can only dream about in Europe.’
ENDS
About Zain Group
Zain (formerly MTC) is a leading emerging markets player in the field of mobile telecommunications. The company was established in 1983 in Kuwait as the region’s first mobile operator and since the initiation of its “3x3x3” profitable expansion strategy in 2003, it has grown exponentially becoming the 4th largest telecommunications company in the world in terms of geographic presence with a footprint in 22 countries spread across the Middle East and the African continent.
As of 8 September 2007, Zain became the company’s new corporate master brand name. Currently, the company is present in 7 Middle Eastern (inclusive of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) and 15 sub-Saharan African countries (inclusive of the recent Ghana licence acquisition on October 22, 2007) with over 13,500 employees, providing a comprehensive range of mobile voice and data services to over 36.4 million active individual and business customers (as of September 30, 2007).
The company operates under the Zain brand name in Kuwait, Sudan, Jordan and Bahrain. In Iraq the company operates as mtc-atheer and in Lebanon as mtc-touch. The company plans to commence operations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the first half of 2008 under the Zain brand and with the recent award of a 15-year nationwide licence in Iraq, mtc-atheer will also be re-branded to Zain in early 2008.
In Africa, Zain operates under the Celtel brand (www.celtel.com) currently in 14 sub-Saharan African countries namely: Burkina Faso, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Celtel is the most successful pan-African mobile network, offering telecommunications services to more people in Africa than any other network. The addition of Ghana will expand Celtel’s presence to 15 countries.
In January 2007, the Group launched ACE–an implementation strategy to realize the target of its 3x3x3 vision of becoming a top ten global mobile operator by 2011. ACE seeks to extract superior value from existing assets through three main thrusts: Accelerating growth in Africa; Consolidating existing assets; and Expanding into adjacent markets.
The Zain brand is wholly owned by Mobile Telecommunications Company KSC and is listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange (Stock ticker: ZAIN). The company had a market capitalization of US$28 billion on 1 November, 2007.
Antoine Abou Khalil
Media Relations Manager
