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Wednesday, 30 April 2008 |
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Question: why should a mobile operator with a growing business on its own turf transport a large number of staff and customers nearly 10,000km to hold a business conference?
Answer: who knows? But this is exactly what Turkish mobile operator Türkcell did recently when it held a well-attended, high-profile conference in the Hotel Naçional in Havana, Cuba.
Cuba currently has a totally closed mobile market with just one Government-owned operator. Restrictions apply to the ownership of mobiles by ‘ordinary’ citizens, leaving the service to VIPs and tourists. As a result, the Cuban mobile market is smaller than many countries in Africa with around 339,000 subscribers in a country of 11 million people, a penetration rate of around 2.5%.
However, things are about to change. The new President Raul Castro is slowly introducing reforms in Cuba, one of which is allowing Cubans to own mobile phones. Judging by the crowds gathering outside Havana’s first public mobile phone shop – several hundred the day before it opened – the demand is certainly there. Handset prices may initially depress the market but if 20 years of experience teaches anything it is that once mobile phones become available the market explodes.
So maybe Türkcell, which counts TeliaSonera among its major shareholders, knows something we don’t; or maybe it is just the first of many to be eyeing up the market.
Ian Channing
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