Huawei and ZTE have been banned from tendering for state contracts in Algeria for two years and been fined by a local court after being found guilty of bribing executives at the state owned telecom operator, Algérie Télécom.

Local media reports named a former executive at the telco, Mohamed Boukhari and a businessman, Chami Madjdoub as being found guilty of receiving illegal payments and money laundering to conceal the sources of those payments.

The alleged bribery took place between 2003 and 2006 and the two men have been sentenced to 18 years in prison, have had their property confiscated, and been fined DZD 5 million (US$64,000) each.

The two companies have themselves also been fined DZD3 million each and banned from tendering with state-owned companies for two years.

Three Chinese officials, Dong Tao, Chen Zhibo and Xiao Chuhfa were sentenced in their absence to 10 years in prison and an international arrest warrant has been issued for their extradition back to the country.

The two companies denied the allegations and presented themselves as victims of the bribery as well.

South Africa’s fixed-line incumbent Telkom SA said that its growing mobile business weighed on its earnings, as the company looks to position itself for future growth.

In a statement, the telco noted: “we are committed to the mobile business and, although tactics may change from time to time, the broader strategy to defend erosion in our fixed-line business while growing converged delivery channels to our customers remains a key priority.”

The mobile unit (which trades as 8ta) saw an EBITDA loss of ZAR2.4 billion (US$283 million) for the year to March 31, 2012 on revenue of ZAR1.2 billion, compared with revenue of ZAR81 million in fiscal 2011 – it first launched in October 2010. Its active subscriber base grew by 213.2 per cent to 1.48 million.

Telkom noted that while capitalising on data growth is “a core feature of our mobile strategy,” it is essential that this is done in a way that does not lead to cannibalisation of its other products – “instead we must offer services that reward the customer for using Telkom’s products with varying levels of incentives depending on the customers’ level of loyalty.”

Of its active mobile customer base, around 70 per cent have prepaid accounts. These customers have an ARPU of ZAR20.89 compared with ZAR206.83 for contract customers. Blended mobile ARPU is ZAR68.86.

The company now has 1,782 base stations in place, up 83.7 per cent from the 970 at March 31, 2011. Of these, 1,351 are “on air.” Telkom noted “challenges in terms of finding adequate power on certain of the remaining base stations.”

For 2013, Telkom is looking to reduce its EBITDA losses in mobile by around 20 per cent, and invest ZAR2 billion – ZAR2.5 billion in capital expenditure. In fiscal 2012, mobile capex was ZAR3.9 billion.
The period also saw the company finally dispose of its Nigerian mobile unit Multi-Links, which resulted in a loss of ZAR896 million. It said that “we believe that the negative financial and legal impacts associated with retaining Multi-Links would have had a far more negative impact on the group than divesting as quickly and proficiently as we did.”

On a group level, the company reported a net loss attributable to shareholders of ZAR204 million, compared with a profit of ZAR1.1 billion to March 31, 2011, on total revenue of ZAR33.7 billion, compared with ZAR33.9 billion.

The UK mobile networks, Vodafone and O2 have announced plans to combine the passive parts of their network infrastructure to create one national grid running each operator’s independent spectrum.

The two companies already share some elements of their network infrastructure under an agreement that was signed in March 2009.

The operators also expect that the shared network will be able to deploy LTE coverage up to two years before the anticipated regulatory requirement of 98 per cent population coverage by 2017.

Both companies will retain complete control over their wireless spectrum, intelligent core networks and customer data. They will continue to actively compete with each other in all products and services, enabled through the ‘intelligent’ parts of their networks.

A new 50/50 joint venture company will be created through the consolidation of both O2 and Vodafone’s existing basic network infrastructure, including towers and masts, which will be transferred to the joint venture or decommissioned over time. Under the proposals, both companies will have access to a single grid of 18,500 masts representing an increase in sites of more than 40 per cent for each operator. The joint venture will also be responsible for the building of new sites needed to extend coverage into rural and remote areas.

There will be opportunities for the decommissioning of duplicate sites and, as a result, the two companies expect there will be a more than 10 per cent overall reduction in the total number of sites, in the UK, used by the two operators.

Each operator will take the responsibility for design, management and maintenance of the radio equipment as well as local transmission in one half of the country. O2 will manage and maintain these elements in the East (including Northern Ireland and most of Scotland) and Vodafone in the West (including Wales).

The two companies are in discussions with Ofcom and intend to establish the joint venture and network sharing company later this year.

Qtel and Vodafone Qatar have signed a contract with Norway’s Systor Group – a leading provider of mobile number portability (MNP) solutions – as the technology partner for the introduction of this service in Qatar.

Qtel and Vodafone Qatar have worked together to agree the technical solution for the process with Systor Group, which provides high-availability transactional database solutions, including number portability, in a diverse range of countries including India, Norway, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal and Ecuador.

Vodafone and Qtel are working closely to MNP before the end of 2012.

Saudi Arabia mobile operator Zain KSA has selected Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) as its LTE mobile broadband infrastructure and services vendor for Jeddah, the country’s second largest city. The operator aims to address the growing demand for mobile broadband and smartphone data services by refarming its 1800MHz GSM frequency band to offer 4G services. As part of the contract, NSN will also manage Zain KSA’s 4G network in Jeddah, in addition to the operator’s existing GSM and 3G networks in the city.

NSN will provide its Single RAN (radio access network) platform, based on its Flexi Multiradio Base Station for 4G deployment and 3G network modernisation. Optimised backhaul will be provided by FlexiPacket Microwave platform.

As part of the contract NSN will upgrade and expand Zain’s legacy Home Location Register (HLR) to the latest, One NDS subscriber data management solution, supporting a total of 25 million subscribers’ mobile services, including 4G. This solution will allow Zain to meet market demands, cover capacity requirements and generate operational savings.

NSN already manages customer networks that carry over 700 million subscribers worldwide and has provided planning and optimisation for over 23 commercial 4G roll outs.