France Telecom has announced that it will complete a long running process, and become solely known as Orange from the end of June 2013.

Since 2006, the group has gradually simplified its visual identity in France and internationally. Orange is now the brand used by all of the group’s commercial operations (fixed, mobile, TV and Internet) and corporate activities.

As part of the process, the name of the shares on the stock market will also be Orange (ticker symbol ORA).

The move to drop the France Telecom name completely was approved annual shareholders’ meeting.

The Orange brand name was originally coined by a UK mobile network in 1994, when it was a Hutchison Whampoa subsidiary. The Orange brand was expanded to other Hutchison subsidiaries, but in 1999, the UK network was sold to Germany’s Mannesmann.

That sale to the German company triggered a hostile takeover bid by Vodafone for the German firm, which was approved by regulators on condition that Vodafone sold the Orange UK mobile network.

Vodafone was successful in its takeover bid – and later sold Orange UK to France Telecom in August 2000.

In 2001, the French mobile network was rebranded as Orange and in 2006, this was expanded to France Telecom’s domestic Internet services. At the same time it was announced that the Orange name would be adopted by all the French company’s consumer facing operations. The historic landline services were finally rebranded last year.

Over the past few years, the company has been increasingly referred to as France Telecom-Orange, but has now finally dropped the French part of the name.

Nawras has increased its 3G network capacity by re-farming some of its 900MHz spectrum for 3G services. This is the third block of spectrum being used for 3G services by the mobile network operator.

Nawras is beginning the second stage of its network upgrade programme that will see the replacement of every single base station in the country with the addition of 3G+. By the end of 2014 the company plans to deliver faster 3G+ to more than 97 per cent of the population.

At the same time, 4G broadband is being rolled out. Currently Nawras offers contiguous 4G coverage of greater Muscat.

Nigerian politicians are opposing a plan to liquidate the assets of the state-owned telco, NITEL, claiming that the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) is ignorant of its actual worth.

In 2006 local company Transcorp bought a 75 per cent stake in NITEL for US$750 million during an earlier privatisation sale, but the government reclaimed the stake in 2009 following several years of neglect.

Since then there have been three aborted attempts to sell the company, with the last failing in June 2011 when the Omen International Consortium, backed by China Unicom, failed to pay a required US$105 million deposit on the sale.

Chairman of the Senate Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation, Senator Gbenga Obadara has however said that NITEL’s liquidation would be harmful to the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians.

The director-general of BPE, Bolanle Onagoruwa has previously said that NITEL and its mobile network subsidiary, MTEL has debts of around US$2.2 billion.

Etisalat is reported to have offered a higher price for Vivendi’s Maroc Telecom stake than rival Qatari bidder Ooredoo, according to two people familiar with the matter, Reuters reports.

Etisalat’s bid needs further work, however, and has more legal conditions than Ooredoo’s offer, so Vivendi has not yet made a final choice, the people said.

"If Etisalat cleans up its offer, then it wins," said one of the sources, who is close to the process. "If not, it will go to Qatar, who also made an offer that Vivendi can accept."

While the exact prices of the offers were not clear, sources earlier told Reuters that they had come in lower than the €5 billion (US$6.5 billion) Vivendi had initially hoped for and closer to the market value of the stake.

Vivendi’s 53 per cent shareholding in Maroc Telecom is now worth €4.34 billion.

Maroc Telecom offers fixed-line, mobile and Internet services in Morocco and is one of Africa’s leading telecom operators, with units in Burkina Faso, Gabon, Mali and Mauritania.

The proliferation of independent tower operators in Africa is a clear indication that service providers on the continent acknowledge the benefits they bring and are willing to enter long-term arrangements with a growing number of them. Rhys Phillip, the recently appointed chief commercial officer of Nigeria-based IHS, details why the opportunity has met with such success in Africa

Phillip believes that after resisting for several years, all of the major mobile operators in Africa have begun sharing towers and openly endorsing the benefits

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