Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) and Mobily have entered a MoU that will facilitate an additional long-term export credit of US$280 million with Finnvera, Finnish Export Credit (FEC), and lenders Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale. This credit will help Mobily purchase advanced solutions and services from NSN.

The Finnish export credit agency Finnvera and its subsidiary Finnish Export Credit (FEC) have issued their guarantee and financing offers. Mobily has mandated Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale to structure and arrange for Shariah compliant financing.

Vodacom has chosen Axiros for device management across its business customer base. The cellco provides voice, messaging, data and converged solutions to approximately 50 million active customers in South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has agreed to move from its existing device management solution to the Axiros platform.

Under the terms of the agreement, all existing business customers will be transferred to Axiros, the technology leader in advanced service and device management.

Specifically, Vodacom will leverage Axiros’ flagship product, Axess.ACS, to monitor, provision and manage deployed Internet services including VoIP and high-speed connectivity. In particular, both Access Gateway and IP phone CPEs will be remotely controlled and configured by Axess.ACS.

The Axess.ACS platform is the leading subscriber device management system – deployed in more than 35 per cent of Europe´s top 50 operators and carriers.

The UAE’s telecom regulator says that 61 000 mobile number porting requests have been received since the mobile number portability (MNP) service launched last December However only 23,000 of the requests have been completed.

There have also been complaints that the process has not worked smoothly for a lot of customers, although it seems many requests were made without the correct paperwork and had to be resubmitted.

"The significant number of porting requests received reflects the real interest of UAE consumers in the MNP service. The TRA is responsible for monitoring the service mechanisms, ensuring all the necessary documents and information is submitted to complete the transition and ultimately, ensuring the switchover process runs as smoothly as possible," said Mohamed Al Ghanim, director-general of the TRA.

Nokia is looking at a deal to buy US vendor Juniper Networks and merge it with NSN, according to German publication Manager Magazin Online.

Speculation is rife in the infrastructure market about the next stage of consolidation. NSN was linked to a deal at the end of last year with the recovering Alcatel-Lucent.

Talk has circulated particularly around NSN as it moves to the heart of the new Nokia, following the imminent sale of the group’s handset business to Microsoft.

And Nokia will have net cash of €7 billion (US$9.75 billion) to €8 billion on its balance sheet, following the Microsoft deal.

Manager Magazin Online said NSN’s CEO, Rajeev Suri, travelled to the US for talks with Juniper at the end of last year.

On the agenda was closer cooperation and a possible merger. Such a move would strengthen NSN in the US where historically it has been weak.

Juniper would cost US$13.7 billion, making it big for NSN to swallow –although the deal could be eased somewhat by Juniper’s US$3.1 billion cash reserves.

However, a deal is not thought to be imminent.

Facebook has agreed to pay a total of US$19 billion to acquire WhatsApp, the world’s most popular mobile messaging app.

Although Facebook already offers its own messaging app in the form of Facebook Messenger, the deal will allow it to tap into WhatsApp’s user base which is significantly larger in Europe, Brazil, Russia and China.

WhatsApp now has 450 million monthly active users and is adding around one million new registered users per day. Around 70 per cent of users are active daily and the volume of messages sent and received is approaching the global total for SMS messages.

The deal will see Facebook pay US$4 billion in cash and US$12 billion in shares, along with US$3 billion in restricted stock to be paid to WhatsApp’s founders and employees, which will vest four years after the deal closes.

WhatsApp will retain its brand and continue to operate independently under the leadership of co-founder and CEO Jan Koum, who also joins the Facebook board of directors. Facebook Messenger will also continue as a standalone app.

If the deal is not able to take place, Facebook will pay WhatsApp US$1 billion in cash and US$1 billion worth of shares.

In a post on the WhatsApp blog, Koum said that the deal will give the company “the flexibility to grow and expand” and give the team “more time to focus on building a communications service that’s as fast, affordable and personal as possible”.

In the face of the Facebook-WhatsApp deal, it seems that Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten negotiated somewhat of a bargain last week when it agreed to acquire messaging app Viber for US$900 million.

The news also had an impact on BlackBerry which, according to Bloomberg, saw its share price surge by as much as nine per cent as investors placed greater value on the vendor’s BBM messaging app.