When the Portuguese 5G auction concluded in October 2021—after a wearying nine months and 1,727 rounds of bidding—the glacial pace looked set to strip the frequency sale of any remaining excitement.
But not so fast.
Starlink—the satellite broadband venture established by Elon Musk’s SpaceX business—has attracted plenty of attention this year, especially as the outspoken entrepreneur continues to share his company’s ambitious plans on social media.
With fellow tycoon Jeff Bezos plotting an alternative satellite broadband launch via Project Kuiper, the two billionaires have become embroiled in an increasingly bitter public feud in recent months.
But these two heavyweights aren’t the only parties determined to enter the satellite broadband sector. From China, to Canada, to the UK, let’s break down the key international players targeting the low earth orbit (LEO) sector to see how their respective proposals stack up.
Following last month’s Progress Report in which we examined key wireless newcomers, today we scrutinize would-be major players who are finalizing their launch plans.
The last 18 months have seen commercial launches from three major wireless newcomers: Rakuten Mobile in Japan, DITO Telecommunity in the Philippines, and WOM in Colombia.
The markets in question are very different, but each is ultra-competitive in nature.
This week we examine the respective progress made by the three newcomers and evaluate whether they’re living up to the hype.
Earlier this month, Norway-based Telenor Group agreed to sell 100% of its mobile business in Myanmar to Lebanese investment firm M1 Group. The deal is valued at $105 million.
As recently as 2013, Myanmar was hailed as the last untapped market in Asia, with global telecom giants jockeying to gain a foothold in the market. But since the country suffered a military coup in February 2021, international operators have watched nervously as conditions have deteriorated.
Telecom tycoon Patrick Drahi was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1963, before moving to France as a teenager.
His cosmopolitan reputation precedes him. He currently holds Israeli, French, and Portuguese citizenship. A renowned art lover, his 2019 takeover of British auction house Sotheby’s thrust him into the UK media spotlight.
Understandably, his recent £2.2 billion ($3.1 billion) acquisition of a 12.1% stake in British communications giant BT has only intensified scrutiny on the notoriously private Drahi.
Last month Luxembourg-based Millicom International Cellular sealed a pair of deals that will see it exit the African telecom sector once and for all.
Its stake in Ghanaian joint venture AirtelTigo was sold to the country’s government. Tigo Tanzania and Zanzibar Telecommunication (Zantel) were offloaded to a consortium led by Axian—the company that previously acquired Millicom’s Senegal-based business in 2018.
In September 2020, U.S. telecom giant Verizon announced the surprise takeover of prepaid MVNO TracFone Wireless. The deal is worth a whopping $6.25 billion.
Verizon hopes that the transaction will help it compete in the prepaid space, where T-Mobile U.S. and AT&T rule the roost with their Metro by T-Mobile and Cricket Wireless brands.
As GlobalComms Database users know, TeleGeography recently reclassified its regions.
This basically means we kicked off 2021 with some Marie Kondo-level tidying by aligning our country-to-region mapping across all of our research. For the GlobalComms team, this included spinning out Oceania from Asia.
Indeed, the exercise gave me the opportunity to check in on happenings in Oceania. And this is why I thought it was the perfect time to take a closer look at one of the region’s major developments: the likely sale of Digicel Pacific.
