The last few months have seen exciting developments for Redknee within the Middle East, with the opening of our regional office in the Dubai Internet City and MTC Kuwait’s launch of their Converged Data Charging project for prepaid and postpaid subscribers utilizing Redknee’s IP Charging Gateway.

The Middle East is experiencing rapid growth due to the deregulation of the telecom market over the last six years, particularly in the mobile space. The region is witnessing intensified competition in local markets as a result of new entrants. There have been various degrees of deregulation; currently the most liberalized countries are Jordan and Bahrain - while the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have been the latest to show signs of liberalization activities. In the context of this increased liberalization, additional mobile licensees will likely emerge in the next few years in countries such as Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria and potentially Lebanon.

In response, leading network operators are differentiating their brands and services and are also adopting a variety of defensive strategies to ensure market dominance. With local markets saturated, operators are also expanding beyond national borders. This has led to the formation of multi-country conglomerates in the region for the purpose of creating increased economies of scale and to better leverage product/service brands as well as innovative technologies.  Notable companies that are in the process of expanding their geographic reach include MTC, Etisalat, Orascom, Wataniya, Investcom and Qtel.

With expansion beyond national borders, operators will need to address how to maintain operational efficiencies as well as grow the subscriber base and subscriber usage quickly while aggressively capturing increased market share. Redknee enables operators to maximize their differentiation and revenue with products and solutions for Converged Billing, IP Charging, Policy Decision Making and Enhanced Location, Presence, Profile, Messaging and mCommerce services.

Changes in technology will further influence the evolution of the mobile communications value chain.  In particular, the next stage of convergence among services and networks coupled with the advent of event additional access technologies (e.g. HSDPA, WIMAX etc.) will set the stage for the next battleground for differentiation among operators. With additional multimedia data-centric services and the prospect of even greater potential service complexity, operators will need to:

• Enable the seamless personalization of services (e.g. optimization of services for the current handset and subscriber preferences);
• Identify innovative promotions and bundles with real-time feedback on the status of promotions to entice subscribers;
• Monetize mutlimedia services in real-time in a manner that is intuitive to the subscriber (e.g. per movie watched).

Given the excitement in the telecom industry, we at Redknee look forward to helping operators realize their vision and strategy, Redknee would like to highlight MTC Kuwait as an example where Redknee’s solutions enabled the rapid introduction of new services while supporting a unified real-time rating and charging environment. Redknee's Converged Billing solution specifically enabled MTC Kuwait to launch value based billing for SMS, MMS, GPRS and mobile content.

The addition of Redknee’s Middle East office in Dubai demonstrates our commitment to the region, to our customers in the region, and to our commitment to fulfill their growing needs. Click here for new office contact details and to see Redknee’s worldwide offices.

Redknee will also be exhibiting at GSM>3G Middle East & Gulf, the region's premier communications event, from September 11 - 12, 2006 at the Dubai International Convention Centre. Redknee will be showcasing various state of the art mobile technologies which monetize and personalize operator services at Stand 125. Our Team will be available to discuss your requirements and show you examples of successful services that are available today and creating streaming revenues for mobile service providers globally. Click here to book a meeting.