Bharti Airtel has until April 2013 to find a Kenyan entity to acquire a 15 per cent stake in Airtel Kenya to remain compliant with local regulations on foreign ownership.

The government has a rule that locals must own at least 20 per cent of any telecom network operator. Although Airtel owns 80 per cent of the company, the other local shareholder, Naushad Merali, was given permission to sell 15 per cent to foreign shareholders.

He retains a five per cent stake, leaving 95 per cent of Airtel Kenya owned by foreigners.

As a consequence, Airtel was given a three-year grace period to find another local shareholder to sell a 15 per cent stake to. That deadline expires in April 2013, and the company has been told that the deadline will not be extended.

The 15 per cent stake is estimated to be worth Sh5.3 billion (US$61 million), and Bharti Airtel is seeking some leniency due to the difficulty in finding a local investor able to buy the stake, given the mobile network is not yet turning a profit.

As mobile service providers increasingly focus their investments on 3.5G and 4G infrastructure, ensuring good quality indoor coverage for these high-capacity networks becomes more of a challenge. Comba Telecom, a wireless enhancement solutions specialist, is hard at work helping network operators overcome these challenges, and Denis Ng, the company’s Director of Technical Marketing and Solutions talks to Comm. about the considerations that need to be taken into account when designing and deploying the most robust next generation networks

Denis Ng, is Comba Telecom’s Director of Technical Marketing and Solutions

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Former Zain Group CEO Saad Al Barrak is looking to raise up to US$1 billion for a fund specialising in niche telecom firms.

His new venture, ILA Group, will begin fundraising in 2013, and initially expects to make between 15 and 20 investments in the Middle East and other emerging markets.

Al Barrak is initially looking to raise US$300 million, which the fund intends to channel into more than a dozen companies. ILA has already established a firm in Cairo specialising in cloud computing and communications between computers. It also has interests in the technology firm Mobila, and the cyber-security company Red Lambda.

Al Barrak hopes to court private investors globally in raising the funds and says ILA Group would play an active role in the firms in which it invests. He projects growth rates compounded over five years of around 30 per cent.

Vodacom’s LTE service has today been officially switched on and is open for business. The service is initially available in Johannesburg, with other cities to follow in the near future.

Vodacom Group CEO, Shameel Joosub said: "Vodacom was the first network in South Africa to test LTE more than two years ago, and since then we’ve been busy upgrading base stations and our fibre-optic transmission network in preparation for today. It’s great to claim another South African first for Vodacom with the launch of LTE services to the public, and it’s even more pleasing that we’ve done this ahead of many other advanced economies around the world."

Contract customers with LTE capable devices can activate the service from today by simply calling 111 or visiting any Vodacom shop. LTE capable devices will be on sale in selected Vodacom outlets before the end of October, with priority going to existing Vodacom customers.

The LTE service will initially be accessible via approximately 70 base stations in Johannesburg.

Joosub said "Switching on commercial LTE services is just one step in a much bigger network transformation. With over 9,000 base stations, Vodacom already has by far the most extensive network in South Africa and on average delivers faster connection speeds. Our challenge isn’t keeping ahead of the other operators – it’s keeping ahead of the tidal wave of data demand. Ninety per cent of our 3G base stations are 21.6 Mbps enabled, and almost 80 per cent are 43.2 Mbps enabled. By the end of the year we aim to have 500 sites enabled for LTE.”

The number of mobile subscribers in Kenya grew by 1.7 per cent between end-March and end-June to stand at 29.7 million, growing the country’s mobile penetration rate to 75.4 per cent, according to statistics released by the telecom regulator.

Prepaid subscriptions continued to dominate the total mobile base, accounting for 29.4 million at the end of June, representing 99.1 per cent of the total. Annual post-paid subscriptions were up by 18.3 per cent year-on-year to 273,367.

The number of Internet subscriptions in Kenya rose by 19.2 per cent from 6.4 million in the previous quarter to 7.7 million during the quarter to end-June.

The annual growth in the Internet/data market may be attributed to the increase in international connectivity bandwidth by 58 per cent to 264,584 Mbps in the quarter to end-June. The bandwidth that is utilised represented 46 per cent of the total available bandwidth capacity.

Mobile data subscriptions continued to dominate the Internet market contributing 98.9 per cent of the total data subscriptions.