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GSMA Launches World’s Most Extensive International Number Portability Registry Service

PathFinder Number Portability Discovery service offers widest global coverage of portability data; Neustar selected to operate database

The GSMA today announced the launch of PathFinder Number Portability Discovery, a GSMA-managed service that will be operated by Neustar, Inc. Designed as a state-of-the-art solution for global number portability, the new service encompasses 2.2 billion telephone numbers that are impacted by number portability worldwide, a figure which is expected to rise rapidly. Number Portability is currently implemented in over 52 countries globally, with many more, including China and India, expected to launch by the end of 2010. The service will also aggregate numbering plan data from virtually every country in the world, including those with high number portability penetration.

“The GSMA’s PathFinder Number Portability Discovery service provides critical numbering plan and number portability information that dynamically enables service providers to identify the true destination network for accurate routing,” said Alex Sinclair, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer at the GSMA. “The service will help eliminate incremental fees, reduce costs, optimise rates in commercial agreements, improve traffic delivery and pave the way for new feature-rich IP-based services. With their leading credentials in Number Portability, we are pleased to extend our relationship with Neustar, who will operate the service.”

PathFinder was created by the GSMA to provide an interoperable, industry-wide solution that enables the routing of global IP service interconnect traffic. The new Number Portability Discovery service will make use of PathFinder’s extensive number portability database, which provides access to all national numbering plans and number portability information, where available, throughout the world. With adaptable and extensible interfaces, the service can rapidly incorporate new number portability data for countries coming on line or that plan to implement number portability in the future.

“We are delighted to be managing the Number Portability Discovery service and to continue to work with the GSMA to evolve the PathFinder platform. Numbering plans and number portability data are a constantly moving target for both telecommunications providers and other industry verticals that are looking to deliver new mobile IP services to their customers,” said Steve Edwards, Senior Vice President and General Manager for Neustar’s Converged Addressing Services business unit. “This new service will greatly alleviate a growing complexity for the industry by providing a single standardised data interface and business arrangement for accessing data regardless of traffic corridors.”

Building on the innovation and extensibility of the PathFinder Carrier ENUM platform, the service makes it simple for carriers, service providers and hubs to improve their voice, SMS and MMS commercial/technical performance in the presence of number portability challenges, while providing a convenient upgrade path to next generation IP services that require number portability correction through Carrier ENUM based number resolution techniques. Customers who subscribe to industry port corrected data from the PathFinder Number Portability Discovery service can seamlessly incorporate richer service delivery data, provisioned for the destination networks.

Furthermore, Pulse Networks, Veraz Networks and TransNexus have been certified as PathFinder Partners to enable access to IP-based ENUM services from both next generation networks and C7 legacy networks. The GSMA’s PathFinder Industry Partner Programme ensures that network and software vendors around the globe have an industry vehicle with which to verify interoperability for ENUM-based routing. The programme lowers the barrier to adoption for service providers by ensuring that equipment vendors are Carrier ENUM-ready as current and future IP services gain
momentum.

About the GSMA
The GSMA represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry. Spanning 219 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators, as well as more than 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers, Internet companies, and media and entertainment organisations. The GSMA is focused on innovating, incubating and creating new opportunities for its membership, all with the end goal of driving the growth of the mobile communications industry. For more information, please visit: http://www.gsmworld.com/.

The GSMA’s Mobile Innovation (MI) initiative has been extremely successful encouraging breakthrough technology, applications and services in the mobile industry. The initiative brings together smaller companies developing innovative mobile products, industry investors from leading venture capital firms and senior figures from mobile operators and leading global brands.

The impact of the initiative has increased year on year in many senses. It has reached more and more people, more and more innovation oriented companies and more and more investors through a combination of our leadership events, the Mobile Innovation Grand Prix competition and through the Mobile Innovation Exchange (MIX), an online community focused on networking and promoting mobile innovation.

Importantly, the essence of the MI is now reaching into and influencing many threads of the GSMA’s broader portfolio of activity. In order to further promote the speed and reach of this scaling, the GSMA has decided to concentrate even more on integrating the initiative’s key insights and themes into the broader GSMA portfolio. You will see product and service innovation manifesting itself in events and activities driven by and linked to the GSMA’s App Planet concept as well as ADCs held at our flagship events – Mobile World Congress and Mobile Asia Congress. Challenges to the industry to develop and showcase their innovative products and ideas will be reflected in the GSMA’s Global Mobile Awards programme and here, in the Mobile World Live (MWL) website, we are integrating the MIX website where many features will be available for members of our Mobile Innovation community.

Innovation is the key to the growth of new services and expanded choice for every member of the 4 billion connected users of the mobile community. The GSMA will continue to play its part in stimulating and encouraging this growth.

What free Facebook means for the mobile Internet

Will Facebook be the service that makes the mobile Internet as widely-used as text messaging? The world's leading social network has landed a potentially groundbreaking deal with some 50 mobile operators, mostly scattered across the developing world. The operators have agreed to provide access to a stripped-down version of Facebook (0.facebook.com) free of data traffic charges, meaning their customers will be able to send other Facebook users messages absolutely free, as well as posting status updates and writing on friends' walls.

What is in it for the mobile operators? Well, free Facebook is effectively a big promotional tool for the mobile Internet and may persuade many of their customers to get online for the first time. Moreover, users will incur data charges as soon as they look at a photograph, video or follow a link to another site (they'll be warned first). In the short-term, free Facebook may also give the pioneering operators a competitive edge - in most countries only one operator has signed up for the free Facebook service, although it is unclear whether any of these arrangements are exclusives.

500 million more Facebook users?

Although most of the 500 million people served by the 50 or so operators probably don't have a PC or a Facebook account today, some will know someone who does and will sign up for a completely free Facebook mobile service. So, Facebook will almost certainly get many more users and the mobile operators should get some incremental data revenues, as people click on links.

To my mind, Facebook is getting the better deal. Facebook is not reimbursing mobile operators for the data traffic to the site and there are no financial terms to the partnerships, Henri Moissinac, head of Facebook's mobile business, told Reuters. Moreover, the operators are running the risk that free Facebook will cannibalise some of their text messaging revenues. Although people are still likely to prefer SMS for private and urgent messages, there will be a lot of instances when communicating via Facebook will do fine. And there is one other major concern: Once you begin giving free access to even a small slice of the mobile Internet, you run the risk of resetting consumers' expectations and notions of value.

Still, if the mobile operators market their data tariffs well and price them carefully and transparently, they could still come out on top. Ideally, when a free Facebook user clicks on a link to a photo, they should be offered the opportunity to buy access to 50 photos for, perhaps, the equivalent of US$2 or US$3.

The loss of text message revenues is likely to be greatest in developed countries, where prices are higher, making the business case for free Facebook more finely-balanced. Even so, a few developed world operators, such as BASE in Belgium, Vodafone and WIND in Greece, 3 in Hong Kong, SFR in France and 3 in the U.K., have signed up. (The American operators are noticeable by their absence). Others will surely follow and the rest will be watching this experiment closely.

But I doubt Facebook would call 0.facebook.com an experiment. Moissinac was at pains to stress to the Associated Press that it is designed to be a "permanent service" with all of the participating operators committed to making it free for more than 12 months.

Vodafone linked to sale of Egyptian operation

Vodafone is reported to be in talks to sell its majority stake in Vodafone Egypt to Telecom Egypt, which already owns 45 percent of the mobile operation. The Financial Times claims that a future sale of Vodafone’s 55 percent share could be worth £3 billion (US$4.3 billion). Vodafone Egypt is highly profitable, and generated £488 million of operating cash flow in 2009-10. Fixed-line operator Telecom Egypt is believed to be keen to enter the domestic mobile market. The Financial Times notes that if no deal is finalised with Vodafone, Telecom Egypt could try and secure its own mobile operating license. The Egyptian government has not ruled out issuing a fourth license.

According to Wireless Intelligence, Vodafone Egypt is the country’s second-largest mobile operator, with a 43 percent market share and 24.6 million connections. The Egyptian mobile market is expected to become more competitive after last month’s settlement between France Telecom and Orascom Telecom, the joint controlling shareholders in ECMS, Egypt’s largest mobile operator. Their decision to end their bitter standoff means that market leader Mobinil could become more aggressive. Egypt’s third mobile operator is Etisalat, the Dubai-based telecoms company that paid US$2.6 billion in 2006 for an Egyptian operating licence and now has 7 million connections (a 12 percent market share).

GSMA Mobile Money Summit

The GSMA Mobile Money Summit kicked off this morning with a call for mobile operators and banks to foster stronger links with one another to further boost a market that already boasts 147 deployments around the world. “There are no deployments of mobile money in the world today that do not involve a mobile network operator [MNO] and bank partnership,” stated Gavin Krugel ( pictured), mobile money director at the GSMA, in the opening keynote. “Mobile operators are not out there to disintermediate banks and become banks; they have certain assets such as a brand and customer connections, but they are not banks. We can’t do this without a bank.” Krugel spoke of good growth in the mobile money market over the last year, up from 119 deployments in mid-2009. Today, 65 of the 147 deployments are commercially live, with the rest eyeing commercial launch

Bharti closes Zain Africa deal

India’s Bharti Airtel announced this morning that it has closed its acquisition of Zain’s mobile operations in 15 countries across Africa in a landmark deal worth US$10.7 billion. In an upbeat press statement, Bharti said that the deal has established it as “the first Indian brand to go truly global" with a footprint that covers over 1.8 billion people. Bharti will now be present in 18 countries across Asia and Africa with a customer base of over 180 million. Bharti revealed that the enlarged company will have combined revenues of over US$12.4 billion and EBITDA of over US$4.7 billion, based on the latest audited results. Bharti said the transaction will make it one of the five largest mobile operators in the world.

“We would like to express our deep gratitude and thank the governments of all the fifteen countries as well as the government of India for their overwhelming support to this landmark event,” commented Sunil Bharti Mittal, Bharti’s chairman and managing director. The closure of the transaction will ease earlier fears that some national regulators in Africa had opposed the deal. The 15 new African markets are Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. According to Bharti's statement, Zain is the market leader in 10 of the 15 countries and second in four countries. The total population base covered by Bharti’s new African markets is around 450 million with penetration at around 32 percent.