Kuwait's Wataniya expecting 25% growth in data revenue

The Kuwaiti mobile operator Wataniya Telecom is expecting revenues from data to grow to 25 per cent of total sales by the end of this year.

The company, a subsidiary of Qtel, now rebranded as Ooredoo, is preparing to launch fast-speed mobile broadband long-term evolution (LTE) service to its customer base in the country in a bid to help to drive this surge in data usage.

"Growth will come from data. All the trends in telecoms suggest data has the potential for growth," said Bassam Hannoun, the general manager and chief executive of Wataniya. "We have an ambition to start seeing data constituting a larger portion of total revenue, beyond 25 per cent by the end of 2013," he said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Mr Hannoun refused to mention how much data currently contributes to revenues, but said they were not very far from their target. It has already been testing LTE technology among select customers and hopes to make it commercially available before the end of the year.

The Kuwaiti operator has subsidiaries in the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Tunisia and the Maldives.

thamid@thenational.ae