With the rise of mobile data and applications, it is becoming clear that the next focus of operators is data services. With the significant growth of mobile broadband in the region, and attaining respectable speeds, operators’ new focus is on how to make customers use these speeds and yet increase their revenues. However, despite the ongoing trend of decline in voice revenues, a recent study from Informa Telecoms & Media showed that the total mobile service revenues will exceed US$1 trillion in 2013. Growth in service revenues will be driven by data revenues rising to over US$330 billion that year, up from an estimated US$208 billion in 2008.

Looking back at 2009, Batelco, the Kingdom of Bahrain's leading telecommunications company, had a very successful and fruitful year. With its new branding identity, complete Next Generation Network and innovative services, Batelco is more than ready to have a brilliant year and face the fresh entrance of STC to the Bahraini market. Our cover story for this month highlights Batelco’s achievements, future plans and its strategy to face the new competition through an extensive interview with Gert Rieder, CEO of Batelco Bahrain.

On the technology side, the Embedded Mobile initiative has been on a roll for a year now and development of devices are already underway. Operators and vendors have considered the development of applications and infrastructure that are involved in the expected huge surge of communication amongst different devices by 2020. In our pages, we tackle the GSMA’s Embedded Mobile program.

On the financial side, many telecom companies announced this month their financial performance of the past year. Telecom Review investigates the performance of major telecom operators in the GCC during 2009. Check in our pages the successful expansions, the highest revenues, lowest profits and the market share changes.

Finally, with LTE already being announced as the 2010 technology; in our issue we review the expansion of mobile broadband across the globe, showing the increasing necessity for high connection speeds on the move.