Alfa and Touch: Who is innovating?

Taking a 50 percent hit in sales of a top product is never easy. But if you’re a government who uses those profits to service your debt, it can be disastrous. Such is the case with mobile text messaging in Lebanon, which has lost around half its volume over the past two years. When you consider that “the money [mobile operators] earn all goes to the government, it…goes into settling the debt of the government of Lebanon” – as mobile operator Touch’s Chief Commercial Officer Nadim Khater bluntly puts it – such a drop in revenues is bad for the entire country. No wonder Touch and Alfa, Lebanon’s only mobile telecoms operators (both of which are government-owned) are desperate for new products and fresh revenue streams. The actual innovation is being done by Orascom and Zain, the private companies contracted to manage Alfa and Touch – officially Mobile Interim Companies