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Telecom
May 2020 www.intellinews.com I Page 18
foreign income including from expatriate finance and cited Snapp! as one of its success stories.
Abbasi Arand added that a subsidiary business has been created to facilitate foreign investment in the company and attract foreign capital. He added that the new entity is set up to support further investment in startups in the country.
Digital in health and education
He pointed to "health and education sectors" as important for MTN-Irancell, saying that the firm’s new approach is moving towards advancing digital services that improve people’s lives.
"Irancell's new approach is towards 'digital operator' and the development of digital services
that will improve people's quality of life," he added.
The company has in recent years increased
its investment in mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), signing deals with several companies, including SamanTel, Shatel Mobile and others.
However, despite significant investment in the industry the MVNO market has failed to take off in Iran.
An MVNO is a wireless communications services provider that does not own the mobile network infrastructure over which it provides services to customers but in fact pays a fee to the network operators.
Telco Veon ‘abandons talks on possible sale of Armenian unit to rival Ucom’
Telco Veon has abandoned talks relating to a possible sale of its Armenian unit Veon Armenia (Beeline) to local rival Ucom, Developing Telecoms reported on May 7.
Ucom provides mobile, fixed and broadband services in Armenia. It filed a proposal to acquire Veon’s larger local unit to the country’s Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC) in
late December, with the potential deal made public in mid-January. Antitrust body SCPEC (State Commission for Protection of Economic Competition of the Republic of Armenia) started its review of the potential deal in February.
Veon’s corporate communications director Kieran Toohey confirmed on May 6 that the possible transaction had been scrapped. The firm provided no reason for the decision, but there had been public disagreements between Ucom’s shareholders and management, the trade media outlet said.
It also reported: “Notably, in April the local Arka News Agency reported that several hundred Ucom employees – including co-founders
Hayk and Aleksandr Yesayan – chose to resign after learning that if the merger concluded successfully, Ucom’s senior shareholders planned to appoint Beeline CEO Andrey Pyatakhin to lead the resulting unit.
“The Yesayan brothers were part of the team that founded Ucom in 2009. They announced in April that they planned to found a new operator called Unet, at which time Ucom’s major shareholders were becoming drawn into an escalating scandal which led them to accuse Armenia’s government of ‘trying to illegally alienate’ the operator. The Prime Minister’s office refuted this claim.”
Veon’s future in Armenia is now seen as uncertain. Its Beeline unit is the second-largest on the market, with Ucom third.