In September, Tech Mahindra, India’s sixth largest software exporter announced the acquisition of a 51 per cent stake in Comviva Technologies, a Bharti Group company, and a global player in providing mobile value added services (VAS), mobile money and mobile payment solutions. The acquisition represents a further move by the Tech Mahindra into the telecom space, as India continues to ramp up its software and telecom applications interests across the Middle East and Africa

Comviva’s Mohapatra says ring back tones have enjoyed enormous success with operators across geographies and the company is confident of replicating this success in Africa

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Shares in Research In Motion (RIM) surged by 18 per cent on November 22 on the back of another endorsement of the company’s as-yet-unseen new BlackBerry line.

Kris Thompson, a National Bank analyst in Toronto, estimated that the firm will sell 35.5 million BlackBerry 10 (BB10) smartphones in the next fiscal year, up from a previous estimate of 31.6 million.

In a research note, Thompson said he had revised his estimate to account for an additional month of availability and “a little extra for the positive sentiment building in the industry from our discussions.”

"The new management team is executing by maintaining the BlackBerry subscriber base, managing costs and cash, and seemingly readying a February 2013 BB10 global platform launch," he added.

According to Bloomberg, RIM’s shares on the Toronto bourse rose by the largest gain since April 2009 – and reduced the stock’s loss this year to 19 per cent.

Earlier this week, RIM had been boosted by comments from Jefferies & Co analyst Peter Misek – usually a fierce critic – who noted that operators had adopted “much more positive view of BB10 than expected”.

The first BB10 smartphones will be unveiled by RIM at a launch event on January 30, and are likely to ship the following month.

“Most are greatly underestimating how many loyal subscribers will upgrade to BB10 in calendar 2013,” Ironfire Capital’s Eric Jackson told Bloomberg. “All those pending upgrades are currently not factored into the stock.”

Qatar Telecom (Qtel) and QIB today signed a US$500 million Islamic finance deal, marking the first Islamic finance arrangement signed by Qtel.

QIB assumed the role of Sole Mandated Lead Arranger and Investment Agent for the deal. The financing is an 18-month Sharia-compliant “Revolving Murabaha”.

Bharti Airtel has said it has undertaken an end-to-end network transformation programme across its mobile operations in 16 African countries that is the largest of its kind on the African continent. In partnership with Ericsson, the programme involved a comprehensive upgrade and expansion of network elements on all of Airtel’s African operations, including switching, radio, network management, data, charging, and consumer-services platforms and systems.

This network transformation is set to enhance Airtel’s network capacity and robustness and help deliver best-in-class services to customers at affordable rates. This also makes Airtel’s networks fully ready for next generation services that include high speed data and value added services. 

In addition, a full upgrade of the charging platforms across all operations was implemented introducing the latest version of Ericsson’s Charging System, enabling Airtel to offer subscribers new and innovative value-added services such as mobile wallets.

Backed by 12,000 consulting and systems integration professionals across the world, over one hundred resources worked onsite to ensure successful delivery of this complex project – the largest network modernisation programme in Africa’s telecom history. Ericsson’s systems integration organisation delivers more than 1,500 systems integration projects per year in multi-vendor and multiple-technology environments.

This transformation programme follows the 2011 announcement of an on-going five-year multi-country managed services agreement, wherein Ericsson would manage and optimise Airtel’s mobile networks across Africa.

Vodacom has reported that in under a month it has managed to more than double the number of LTE-enabled base stations on its network. As of November 19, the company has over 400 LTE-enabled base stations live and is ahead of schedule to meet its target of switching on 500 sites by the end of 2012.

As part of its push to rollout the new technology to cities across South Africa, the company is also pleased to announce the commercial launch of LTE services in Durban. Cape Town is expected to follow before the end of the year.

Durban marks the third city to benefit from LTE after Johannesburg and Pretoria.

LTE was first launched in South Africa by Vodacom in October and the service is currently available to Vodacom contract customers. It will be available to top-up and prepaid customers in 2013. It also requires customers to use a 64K or 128K SIM card.