Approximately three million SIM cards have been suspended in the UAE after users failed to register them before the cut-off deadline.

Suspension means that a mobile subscriber cannot make an outgoing call but can receive incoming calls and text messages.

"The licensees suspended the service for almost three million subscribers who were late in updating their information during the last phases of the campaign." noted the TRA director general, Mohamed Al Ghanim.

In addition, over the past four phases of the registration process around two million SIM cards have been permanently disconnected after being suspended for three months.

A fifth phase, out of six by the telecom regulator and the mobile networks has now started, targeting around four million more accounts to require them to register their identification with the mobile networks.

The aim is to complete the entire process by the start of next year.

Zain’s Saudi Arabian subsidiary has announced that its CEO, Fraser Curley has resigned from the company with immediate effect – citing personal reasons.

The company said that it is naming Hassan Kabbani as its new CEO.

Kabbani joins Zain KSA at a crucial stage of the company’s evolution. With 23 years of executive telecommunications experience in the Middle East and Africa, Kabbani joins Zain with very strong credentials. To date, he has held the post of CEO of five successful telecommunications operations, playing a pivotal role in business transformation, and helping them to achieve extraordinary growth.

Kabbani headed mobile operations within the Orascom Telecom Group in Egypt, Algeria, sub-Saharan Africa, Yemen, and Syria, and prior to these leadership roles held key commercial and customer focused roles in France Telecom Mobile Lebanon. Most recently he was advisor to the chairman and board member of Oger Telecom, as well as a board member of Cell C in South Africa.

The Namibian mobile network operator, Leo has adopted the brand name of its landline operator parent, Telecom Namibia and is to be known as TN Mobile.

Telecom Namibia managing director Frans Ndoroma said his company acquired Powercom, which traded as Leo last year and the board of directors and management decided to give it a new brand; TN Mobile.

The former Leo website is already redirecting visitors to the Telecom Namibia website.

Leo was owned by Telecel Globe, a subsidiary of Egypt’s Orascom Telecom and was sold to a consortium of banks for US$60 million in 2011, before being bought by Telecom Namibia, for a reportedly paltry amount in November 2012.

Telecom Namibia is 100 per cent owned by the government and competes with MTC, which has a 90 per cent market share of the mobile market, and is also 64 per cent owned by the government.

Egypt’s Mobinil says that it is currently negotiating a loan from a consortium of four banks. In a statement to the stock exchange, the company said that it is looking to raise EGP2.5 billion (US$357 million) from the banks, which will be used for network expansion projects.

The debt raising could suggest that a previous plan to sell fresh shares to raise funds has been delayed in light of the country’s on-going political turmoil.

The company, which is majority owned by France Telecom currently lists just one per cent on the stock market. It had been expected to sell fresh shares to take its public shares up to 15 per cent of the total.

Following a protracted dispute with the previous co-owner, France Telecom now owns 94 per cent of Mobinil, while Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding retains a small five per cent stake.

The changes to the listing requirements for at least a 15 per cent stake to be floated were made by the stock exchange last year.

The company is also shortly to receive a licence to resell landline services provided by Telecom Egypt, but is also expected to face increased price competition when the landline operator launches its own MVNO.

South Africa’s second landline operator, Neotel is planning a launch of its own LTE network with a formal announcement expected to be made August 21.

The launch event comes just ahead of the company’s own deadline of launching its LTE network by September. Coverage is expected to be concentrated near the largest city of Johannesburg with 50 base stations and will be based on the company’s 1800MHz spectrum.

However, the Neotel is unlikely to shake up the other mobile networks too much as it is widely expected to be sold – with the buyer expected to be Vodacom.

Vodacom is said to be the last company running its eye over Neotel’s accounts after rival MTN dropped out of bidding.

The advantage for Vodacom apart from Neotel’s LTE network and radio spectrum would be access to a much larger landline network for backhaul and to cross sell to corporate users.