Competitive edge

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While Qatar's telecoms sector is soon to get its first taste of competition, with a licence for a second mobile operator to be announced imminently, the country's incumbent operator, Qtel, is remarkably relaxed about the development.

Far from being worried about losing market share, Dr Naser Marafih, Qtel's CEO even sees benefits to a competitor operating in the market. "We welcomed competition from the beginning," Marafih says. "We believe that it will be good for the public to have competition. We welcome it because we also think it is good for the customer to have choice.

"It will also relieve us of some of our obligations because someone will share the building of the infrastructure...that would also optimise our investment as at least we would be sharing between the two operators.

Marafih also points out that Qtel is no stranger to competition, having started a strategy to diversify into new sectors and geographical markets in the past few years as part of an ambitious plan to become one of the world's top-40 telecom companies by 2020.

There are three main strands to the company's strategy: to develop consumer wireless technologies such as GSM; to move into the consumer data market including wireless broadband; and to move into the high-speed managed services sector for corporate and data customers, according to Marafih.

"We have been moving on all these fronts for the past two or three years to build up a portfolio of investment in the region, centred on these three pillars. Of course the region that we are focusing on is MENA and also Asia, where we are pursuing growth," Marafih says.

As part of its commitment to managed data services, Qtel acquired a 38% stake in US-based managed data services provider NavLink early in 2007, making it an equal partner in the company with US telco giant AT&T.

"We are planning to aggressively target the Middle East market. Through NavLink, Qtel provides its top-end customers with network solutions in the enterprise data market," says Marafih. "In early 2006, Qtel also set up the Qatar Data Centre, which hosts the region's first AT&T global node, providing multinational companies (MNC) with global connectivity.

"We are focusing on the Middle East because the region has potential for growth and we know the risk profile. Our regional ambitions are focused on, but not limited to, Asia and the Middle East and North African (MENA) regions," Marafih says.

Just last year Qtel acquired a majority stake in Wataniya, Kuwait's second licensed GSM operator, in one of its biggest acquisitions to date. It bought a 51% stake in the company, partly to strengthen its offering for the wireless consumer market. "Wataniya operates in six countries and they have a very good portfolio in countries where we believe the growth potential is very good," Marafih says.

"We will continue to see if other opportunities exist to also enlarge the investment in Wataniya. It actually has six operations, in Algeria, Tunisia in partnership with Orascom, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia with a company called Bravo, Maldives and Palestine, which is going to be launched soon.

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