Vodafone funds fixed rollout with USD100m loan

Vodafone Qatar, the Middle East country’s second national operator (SNO) licensee, will arrange a USD100 million loan in the next 45 days to fund the rollout of a fixed line network, reports Bloomberg quoting John Tombleson, the company’s acting CEO. Vodafone Qatar, a joint venture of the UK’s Vodafone Group and Qatar Foundation, launched commercial mobile services in July 2009 and carved out a 26.7% share of the market by 31 March 2011, according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database. Having introduced the first wireless competition to incumbent Qatar Telecom (Qtel), Vodafone went on to launch its first fixed broadband services in July 2010 in the Pearl-Qatar development, with expansion planned for other new-development zones, ahead of an integrated rollout with the country’s partly state-funded National Broadband Network. GlobalComms also notes that fixed telephony services are being added in new-development areas, while Vodafone’s SNO concession stipulates that its fixed voice footprint must cover Doha’s West Bay Central Business District by October 2012 and the entire country by April 2014.