Azerbaijan: Mobile Telecoms Market Overview
Overview
Azerbaijan has three GSM networks; Azercell, Bakcell and Nar Mobile; and one CDMA, CATEL. It’s a fast growing market, having grown 51.34% over the last year.
Azercell
Azercell Telecom was established on the 16th January 1996 as a joint venture between Turkcell and the Ministry of Communications of Azerbaijan Republic and launched its GSM network in December that year.
It offered services on an exclusively post-paid basis up until 1998 when it launched its successful SimSim package, a pre-paid service.
Azercell is the largest operator in the region with 2.99 million subscribers as of the first quarter of 2008.
Azercell offers its subscribers GPRS/MMS roaming services with 111 network operators from 55 countries around the world, as of the end of last year.
Azercell is currently in talks with the Azerbaijani government to acquire new licences needed to provide 3G services to the country.
Bakcell
Bakcell launched operations in March 1994 as a joint venture between GTIB of Israel and the Ministry of Communications of Azerbaijan Republic, starting as an Analogue (ETACS) System Operator and in December 1998 launched GSM services.
The company was fully privatised in December 2003 and has been 100 percent privately owned since January 2004.
Bakcell is also currently in talks with the Azerbaijani government to acquire the licences needed to provide 3G services to the country. Currently Bakcell’s network is GSM 900 based.
Azerfon (Nar Mobile)
Azerfon was licensed to provide mobile services throughout Azerbaijan as of December 2005 and launched commercial services on the 21st of March 2007 under the brand name Nar Mobile.
Azerfon were the third GSM provider to be licensed in the region and is still the smallest, though growing rapidly.
CATEL
CATEL are a CDMA operator, it is one of the first Azerbaijan-American joint ventures in the telecommunications industry, operated by the Government of Azerbaijan and a United States consortium Omni-Metromedia Caspian Ltd. (OMCL).
The company was established in 1997 and began operations in 1999, it promotes itself as was the first fixed wireless digital network in Azerbaijan to provide reliable and toll-quality telephone, facsimile, ISDN, Internet and data transmission to customers.
CATEL began deploying its wireless network in August 2004 using Qualcomm’s CDMA stand and in 2006 received the licence to commercial operate the network, providing wireless services under the FONEX brand name.