The two major events in the telecoms market this year are likely to be the creation of a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network and further development of Tele2 in Russia.

In the largest market, South Africa, we have seen several trends.

Before investing in emerging markets, MTN considers a combination of factors including mobile penetration levels, population size, the economic growth of a country and the competitive landscape.

2014 will be the year that operators trade gut and intuition for a new way of marketing – one that relies on big data analytics and science.