Telecom Lead Middle East: Vodafone has signed an
agreement with Kuwaiti telecom company Zain to expand its footprint in the Middle
East region.
Under the non-equity partnership agreement, Vodafone will
work with Zain companies in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq to
provide customers with high quality communications services.
The move will enhance both Zain and Vodafone’s ability to
meet growing demand among multinational businesses for sophisticated voice and
data communications solutions as well as advanced roaming services within the
Middle East.
Vodafone added that the deal would complement its own
regional operations in Egypt and Qatar, and increase the number of countries in
which it has partner market agreements to more than 50.
Recently, Vodafone said its revenue Q1 2012 revenue from
Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific declined 3.8 percent including a 10.0 percentage
point adverse impact from foreign exchange rate movements, particularly the
Indian rupee and the South African rand.
On an organic basis service revenue grew by 6.1 percent
driven by customer and data revenue growth, partially offset by the impact of
MTR reductions and competitive pressures.
Service revenue growth decreased compared to the prior quarter
partly due to the benefit of the additional leap year day in the previous
quarter.
Growth was led by strong performances in India, Vodacom,
Egypt, Ghana and Qatar, offset by service revenue declines in Australia and New
Zealand
Recently, IBM and Vodafone joined hands to combine mobile
communications and cloud computing for managing smart home appliances.
Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technology makes home appliances more
intelligent by connecting them wirelessly to the internet. Vodafone and IBM
will showcase the mobile management of a washing machine and other smart home
devices that are connected by Vodafone’s Global M2M Platform running on IBM’s
new SmartCloud Service Delivery Platform.
editor@telecomlead.com
