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Publication Date: July 2008
EVENT SPOTLIGHT
The big news in Morocco’s telecom sector in 2007 was the launch of limited-mobility wireless services by new entrant Wana, a development that revolutionized the Moroccan fixed-voice sector: fixed-voice penetration jumped from 4.9% by year-end 2006 to an astonishing 8.7% less than a year after the operator’s launch. Wana’s fixed-wireless service in Morocco, branded as Bayn, continued its good run into the first quarter of this year. Bayn has been able to add 250,000 new subscribers to the 1.1m-strong subscriber base it achieved in 2007, its first year of launch. The operator now seems set to repeat its impressive performance with its services, which it markets under the Wana brand-name: its CDMA-based wireless broadband offer, launched in January 2008, won 40,000 net adds in Q1 2008 alone, almost doubling the existing number of wireless broadband subscribers in Morocco to 87,000. In June of this year, the operator finally rolled out its long-anticipated fully mobile voice service over its CDMA network. We expect Wana’s mobile wireless broadband service to pose a healthy challenge to the DSL service monopolized by Maroc Telecom, but we expect Wana to face strong competition from well-organized and market-savvy mobile operators on the voice and mobile data fronts.
Author: Badii Kechiche
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