SingTel has raised its stake in Bharti Airtel after paying around S$383.6 million (US$302 million) for a further 3.62 per cent stake.

SingTel will pay the amount in cash to buy the additional equity stake in Bharti Telecom Ltd., which owns about 43.6 per cent of Bharti Airtel. Post the transaction, SingTel’s direct and indirect holding in Bharti Airtel will rise to 32.34 per cent from 30.76 per cent at present.

In a stock market filing, SingTel said that it bought the stake from MacRitchie Investments as part of its "strategic focus on maximising the value of its existing businesses."

MacRitchie Investments is a holding company owned by the Singapore government, which also owns a 51.9 per cent stake in SingTel. In essence, it’s a tidying up of the shareholder ownership.

SingTel said that the acquisition will not have a material impact on its earnings per share nor its net tangible assets per share for the current financial year ending March 31, 2014.

BlackBerry has announced that it is now looking at a possible sale of the company.

The board has formed a special committee to explore what it said are "strategic alternatives", which could include possible joint ventures, strategic partnerships or alliances, a sale of the company or other possible transactions.

A sale would likely be to private equity investors, and could involve a management buyout of the company.

The special committee of the board is comprised of Barbara Stymiest, Thorsten Heins, Richard Lynch and Bert Nordberg, and will be chaired by Timothy Dattels.

"We believe that now is the right time to explore strategic alternatives." said the committee’s chairman, Timothy Dattels.

Thorsten Heins, president and CEO of BlackBerry commented: "As the special committee focuses on exploring alternatives, we will be continuing with our strategy of reducing cost, driving efficiency and accelerating the deployment of BES 10."

The company currently has a market value of around US$5 billion and also has some US$3 billion in cash and equivalents.

JP Morgan Securities is serving as financial advisor to BlackBerry and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Torys are serving as legal advisors.

Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) reported a near 15 per cent fall in its second quarter sales of €2.76 billion (US$3.67 billion), although that was a slight improvement on the previous three months.

The decline in revenues was put down to divestments of businesses, as well as the exiting of certain customer contracts and countries. Excluding these two factors, sales declined by approximately 11 per cent due to reduced wireless infrastructure deployment activity, which affected both Mobile Broadband and Global Services.

Gross margin before specific items was 38.4 per cent in Q213, an improvement of 12.2 percentage points from Q212. The year-on-year improvement was primarily due to higher gross margin in both Mobile Broadband and Global Services.

The company recorded a net profit of €15 million, as compared to a loss of €260 million a year ago.

In Q213, Global Services represented 53 per cent of net sales, with Mobile Broadband representing 46 per cent of sales.

On a geographical basis, the year-on-year decline in net sales was primarily due to Asia, Middle East and Africa, Europe, and Latin America.

At the end of the second quarter 2013, NSN had approximately 50,500 employees, a reduction of approximately 12,900 over the past year.

NSN is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Nokia after it bought out Siemens stake in the company.

VimpelCom has reported what it described as a "solid operational performance" for the second quarter of this year.

The company posted a one per cent rise in revenues to US$5.7 billion. VimpelCom’s revenues would have grown by four per cent excluding the impacts of mobile termination rate cuts and currency losses.

The customer base rose faster, by five per cent to 215 million, boosted by the closure of the MTS network in Uzbekistan, even though it reduced its Algerian customer base by 1.4 million following an audit.

Net profit rose by 17 per cent to US$573 million.

EBITDA decreased two per cent year-on-year, reflecting the negative impact of unfavourable currency movements, the 72 per cent reduction of mobile termination rates in Italy, the VoIP effect in Bangladesh and certain one-off charges of approximately US$43 million, relating to a settlement, restructuring charges, a fine in Pakistan and M&A related costs. Underlying EBITDA growth, excluding these effects, would have been three per cent year-on-year.

Capex totalled US$791 million in Q213, with further roll out of the mobile networks in Russia, Bangladesh and CIS and continued roll out of HSPA+ and in backbone capacity to support growth in data in Italy.

Net debt decreased slightly to US$ 22.6 billion at the end of the quarter.

Telecel Zimbabwe has reached an agreement with the government to renew its 2G/3G licence in the country for twenty years. The licence renewal fee amounts to US$137.5 million.

Ahmed Abou Doma, Orascom Telecom Holding’s CEO commented: "I am very glad that we reached this agreement with the government of Zimbabwe."

Telecel Zimbabwe is a subsidiary of Egypt’s Orascom Telecom Holding. The renewal of the licence was being held up while the company reduced its shareholding to a minority stake. Whether the company has complied with that ruling was not made clear in the company statement.

The renewal of the licence though should also end the interconnection stalemate between Telecel and Econet.