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Four interesting bits of news from four different parts of the globe to keep up with: … [visit site to read more]

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Fiber in South America has had a tendency to come from the coasts and move inland. However, Millicom, which provides services in Latin America via the TIGO brand, has plans to change that up somewhat and build some transcontinental fiber. … [visit site to read more]

Global analytics software provider FICO has partnered with FPG Technologies & Solutions to bring advanced decision management and analytics tools to companies across West Africa.

“West African companies are engaged in digital transformation initiatives that have gotten extra momentum from the pandemic,” said Rex Mafiana, CEO of FlexiP Group, a leading enterprise IT solutions provider and systems integrator. “Across all industries, it’s critical to be able to automate more decisions, to change strategies faster, and to increase efficiency. FICO has world-class tools that can help our customers be more competitive.”

FPG will sell, implement and support these tools – including FICO Blaze Advisor decision rules management system and FICO Xpress Optimization, which allow businesses to automate high-volume decisions, rapidly change strategies and leverage advanced analytics to improve performance.

As FICO’s flagship rules authoring solution, FICO Blaze Advisor decision rules management system maximizes control over high-volume operational decisions. Blaze Advisor provides businesses across multiple industries with a scalable solution that delivers unprecedented agility and actionability for smarter, transparent, and better business decisions.

FICO Xpress Optimization allows businesses to build, deploy and use optimization solutions that crunch through millions of potential scenarios to find the ideal solution. Standard capabilities include scalable high-performance solvers and algorithms, flexible modeling environments, rapid application development, comparative scenario analysis and reporting capabilities, for on-premises and cloud installations.

“Rules management and mathematical optimization are the core technologies for better decisions,” said Mark Farmer, who manages partner relationships for FICO in EMEA. “FPG has deep domain expertise in multiple industries in West Africa, and can help businesses there use these technologies to transform their performance.”

Oi, described as the largest landline telephone operator in Brazil, has reportedly filed its second request for judicial recovery with the aim of protecting cash resources and avoiding bankruptcy.

On Thursday 2 February Oi and its subsidiaries Portugal Telecom International Finance and Oi Brasil Holdings Cooperatief apparently asked a business court in Rio de Janeiro for « urgent precautionary protection » to suspend some payments.

The order aims to suspend the enforceability of certain obligations and allow the company to continue negotiations with its creditors.

According to Brazilian press reports, the company’s request refers to “the unquestionable success of the first judicial reorganization ». This took place in 2016. However, the company also admits that its financial situation has worsened « due to various unpredictable and uncontrollable factors », which are not detailed in the request. Thus it is again resorting to judicial protection.

The company’s current debt is said to be 29 billion reais (about US$5.7 billion), of which a payment of 600 million reais is due this Sunday.

As we noted in December, although the obligations related to the original recovery plan were deemed by the Seventh Business Court of Rio de Janeiro to have been met, unpaid creditors will still be able to continue to make claims. Oi faced claims from some 65,000 creditors, and not all cases have been settled to date.

Oi has sold many of its assets, notably its mobile operations, a submarine cable company, a fibre optic company and thousands of fixed telephone towers, to deal with its debts. However, it seems as though it may still have some tricky debt management ahead.

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Airtel Africa booked higher revenues and profits on the back of rising subscriber numbers and service uptake.

Profit after tax grew 1.7% to US$523 million, while revenue was up more significantly at 12.1% to US$3.9 billion. Revenue grew as the company reported growth across its units.

Mobile services grew across its 14 markets, with Nigeria, its largest market, seeing growth of 20.9%. Whereas East Africa experienced a rise of 11.9% and Francophone Africa by 11.8%. Breaking down mobile services, data revenue was the highest riser at 22.3% while voice services were up by 12.7%.  

The growth coincided with swelling subscriber numbers as the total customer base increased by 10.1% to 138.5 million across Airtel’s footprint. The customer base for data grew 13.6% while mobile money customer was up 22.2%.

CEO Segun Ogunsanya highlighted in a financial call today (Feb 2) the profile of Nigerian customers is shifting. Around 20% are on 4G, 15% use 3G, and the rest of the base is still using 2G phones. The chief executive said this leaves plenty of room for growth by transferring customers over to 4G to gain revenues from services such as mobile finance.

Capex in the last three quarters grew 5.8% to US$457 million, as the group acquired spectrum in Nigeria, DRC, Tanzania, Zambia and Kenya.

Ogunsanya said: “We will continue to invest in expanding our network and evolving our service offerings to further deepen both financial and digital inclusion across our markets. We have especially focused on enhancing our spectrum footprint across all our markets. Over the last nine months we have spent almost $490m on 4G and 5G spectrum across key markets to improve network capacity and quality, future-proof the company for continued growth opportunities and facilitate economic progress in all our markets.