“There is high penetration and we have 115% penetration in the Kuwait telecom sector”, recounts Scott Gegenheimer , CEO of Wataniya Telecom . Kuwaitis like to chat, whether in private or in business. A Kuwaiti without an iPhone, Blackberry or Nokia phone is like Arabia without oil, purely unimaginable.

Kuwait Telecom : Kuwait calling

Although Kuwait's Telecom sector is not supervised by an independent regulator, the country witnessed increasing competition in recent years.

It is not easy in the competitive Gulf Region to retain a first mover advantage. When Kuwait became the first country in 1999 to open its cellular market to competition, its neighbor states suddenly appeared like dormant accounts. “There is high penetration and we have 115% penetration in the country”, recounts Scott Gegenheimer , CEO of Wataniya Telecom. Kuwaitis like to chat, whether in private or in business. A Kuwaiti without an iPhone, Blackberry or Nokia phone is like Arabia without oil, purely unimaginable.

Wataniya, which is short for National Mobile Telecommunications Company, entered the market with its distinctive red W-logo at the end of the last millennium. The incumbent MTC Kuwait changed its name meanwhile into Zain (Arab. good).  Zain is listed at both the Kuwait Stock Exchange KSE and the Dubai Financial Market DFM. Founded in 1983 as the region’s first mobile operator, Zain emerged as one of the leading players in the Middle East and Africa. It is now present in 22 countries, and has a client base 56.3m people

Kuwait telecom is another sector suffering from endless rows in the parliament. “There is no regulatory agency in Kuwait and only a Ministry of Communication. However, we expect that by the end of the year a regulatory body will be created. I have been here two years and we have gone through three parliaments and four different Ministers of Communication but we think things will stabilize and continue to grow.” explains Mr. Gegenheimer .

VIVA is the third operator in Kuwait. “We were successful in doing this and we managed to capture more than 10% of the Kuwait telecom market- this shows that we planned carefully and met our target as a third operator in Kuwait”, says VIVA’a CEO Najeeb Al-Awadi.

Wataniya had a 1.46 million customer base in Kuwait at the end of quarter three in 2009 an increase of 13.6% from 2008. Gegenheimer and his employees also reach out to new technologies: “We work with banking sectors and they use our data products on their ATMs to link back to their head offices, the restaurants’ credit card machines use our products, and wireless is becoming huge through the ITC sector and society in general.  People don’t always notice it or see it but it exists everywhere and this is what’s driving the market and growth in general.”

But Wataniya Telecom also faces challenges. In April 2010, the firm announced that it will delay listing of its shares on the Qatari stock exchange. The listing was scheduled to take place on April 13. No new date for the listing has yet been provided.

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