Bharti Airtel says that its African subsidiaries will join the trade group, the Bridge Alliance – which is made up of 14 operators serving over 500 million customers.

Andre Beyers, chief marketing officer at Airtel Africa said the new initiative would help the company improve mobile business operations at an international level.

"It is important to be part of a strong alliance which can enable our enterprise customers to achieve full visibility of their regional mobile expenses for better check and control of corporate mobile spend," Beyers said.

"Additionally, being part of Bridge Alliance enables customers of Airtel Africa opcos to enjoy forward-thinking roaming services extended to new countries in Asia and beyond," he added.

Bridge Alliance members leverage their partnership to develop and launch enterprise and roaming services.

Wataniya Telecom Maldives has launched LTE services, for the first time in the Maldives following a trial service that started in April.

Wataniya customers using the 4G network will be able to access download speeds of up to 15 Mbps.

Wataniya launched the 4G network in April at the ICT Connect Expo. The first package, wNet 4G, was launched in June 2013 as part of the ‘Wataniya for Business’ portfolio for small and medium sized enterprises.

The network upgrade was provided by Huawei as part of a wider network modernisation contract signed last year.

Ooredoo has awarded a contract to deploy telecom towers in its Myanmar subsidiary to a consortium led by the Digicel Group.

The consortium – comprising of Digicel Group, YSH Finance and First Myanmar Investment – will be amongst the first telecom tower companies to begin construction in Myanmar and will accept multi-tenancy agreements.

Earlier this year, Digicel failed to secure a mobile operating licence in its own right, having lost out to Ooredoo and Telenor.

It is not clear why Ooredoo has outsourced the tower deployment to a company that lost the tender for the operating licence, although Digicel does have an active presence in the country.

Wataniya has named Peter Kaliaropoulos as chief operating officer, six months after the Australian left regional rival Batelco.

His appointment follows that of Abdulaziz Fakhroo as chief executive in March as Wataniya – 92 percent-owned by Ooredoo – tries to halt a sustained earnings slump. The Kuwaiti firm’s profits fell in six of the past seven quarters.

Wataniya, which also has operations in Algeria, Tunisia, the Maldives and the Palestinian Territories, did not make a formal statement to the media announcing Kaliaropoulos’ appointment, but he is now listed on the company’s website as among its senior management team.

Kaliaropoulos left Batelco in June after eight years, his roles having included CEO and chief operating officer.

Vodafone Qatar and NetComm Wireless today announced a strategic partnership to extend Vodafone Qatar’s fixed and mobile networks to devices and machines that are used to enable smart city applications such as security systems, intelligent transport systems, smart metering and smart medical devices.

The new agreement follows from the success of NetComm Wireless’ existing partnership with Vodafone Global Enterprise for delivery of the Vodafone MachineLink 3G across Vodafone Global Enterprise’s markets. With Vodafone’s global experience in connecting machines, businesses of all sizes across all industry and service sectors are set to benefit from the ability to remotely monitor and manage previously isolated assets from a central location in real-time using Vodafone Qatar.

Designed to seamlessly integrate with Vodafone’s network in Qatar, the Vodafone MachineLink 3G and NetComm Wireless’ broader portfolio of wireless M2M devices will allow Vodafone Qatar to expand into bringing end-to-end solutions to its customers in the local market.

The Vodafone MachineLink 3G, developed by NetComm Wireless, has been certified by Vodafone Group and is ready for deployment to business customers on the Vodafone Qatar network.

NetComm Wireless’ industrial-strength 3G M2M devices are built to withstand challenging conditions, such as rugged in-vehicle and outdoor environments and feature a Software Development Kit (SDK) for true open management capabilities. The devices are also equipped with TR-069 to support remote asset management and control and multi-system monitoring for always-on connectivity.