Mobile health (mHealth) is a growing vertical market around the world, though the size of the opportunities that exist are yet to be fully quantified. Gilles Fayad, director of business development, VAS, MENA at Qualcomm believes localisation of needs and solutions will be an integral component of the mass market take up of such services

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Bharti Airtel has announced an agreement with Ericsson and Huawei to deploy a network for its Bangladesh subsidiary. The agreement is modelled on Bharti’s managed networks business model in India and Sri Lanka.

Bharti acquired 70 per cent stake of Warid Telecom in January.

Bharti’s agreement with the two vendors includes network design, planning, implementation, project management as well as material and services for the base station sites and microwave transmission. It will also enable advanced business applications, more entertainment options and also provide a platform for evolved mobile services for a wider area in rural Bangladesh.

Under this contract, Ericsson will deliver and manage the majority of the company’s network capacity. Ericsson will expand and upgrade the circuit and packet core network, amongst other things. Ericsson will also supply its MSC-S Blade Cluster which supports multiple core network functions on a common blade type; a single blade can handle 1 million subscribers.

Huawei will swap the existing radio network in the eastern areas of Bangladesh with state of art of technology that has better quality and performance, is more energy efficient and can be run at lower in OPEX.

The UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) today confirmed that BlackBerry services are now compliant with the country’s telecommunications regulatory framework.

Therefore all BlackBerry services in the UAE will continue to operate as normal and no suspension of service will occur on October 11, 2010.

Vodafone has signed a 10-year deal with African tower company, Eaton Towers to take over the operations and co-location management of 750 telecom towers for Vodafone Ghana. Over the life of the contract Eaton expects to invest up to US$80 million on upgrading and improving the existing towers and on improving Vodafone’s coverage in Ghana. Eaton will also develop the existing infrastructure and build new towers.

The agreement also enables Eaton to sell co-location and shared-infrastructure facilities to other mobile operators, generating future revenues from separate long-term contracts.

Eaton will assume responsibility for all operational aspects of the passive infrastructure, including health and safety, security and power provision. Upgrades to the existing sites will include new power generation equipment and advanced management systems aimed at reducing diesel consumption and other costs.

On September 15, 2010, Omani telco Nawras announced its intention to list on the Muscat Securities Market in a development that has been highly anticipated for much of the year. Representing the first initial public offering (IPO) on the Muscat bourse since the middle of 2008, Nawras’ public offer is generating significant interest not just from Oman but across the region

The announcement of the launch of Nawras’ IPO on September 15 was met with significant enthusiasm in Oman

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