Millicom announced today that its board has decided unanimously to appoint Mauricio Ramos as its new Chief Executive Officer with effect from April 1, 2015.

Ramos was most recently president of Liberty Global’s Latin American division, a position he held from 2006 until February 2015. Over the past fourteen years he has held a number of leadership roles at Liberty Global, including positions as chairman and CEO of VTR in Chile, CFO of Liberty’s Latin

American division and president of Liberty Puerto Rico. Throughout this period he has successfully developed both mobile and broadband businesses in Latin America, delivering solid operational improvement and outstanding financial results.

Ramos is also chairman of TEPAL, the Latin American Association of Cable Broadband Operators. He is a Colombian national who received a degree in Economics, a degree in Law and a postgraduate degree in Financial Law from Universidad de los Andes in Bogota.

Ericsson president and CEO Hans Vestberg reflected on the pace of change in the industry at the company’s opening-day media and analyst briefing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, showcasing the latest solutions that the company is bringing to market, and making predictions for 2015.

Vestberg predicted four key changes during 2015: more people will watch streamed, on-demand video than broadcast TV on a weekly basis; video will generate half of the mobile data traffic; LTE subscriber growth will exceed 80 per cent; and world mobile broadband coverage will be above 70 per cent.

Zain Group has announced a strategic collaboration with NeXgen Group, a leading smart city advisory and consulting services provider based in the UAE. The cooperation will see the two companies join forces in advising governments and mega real estate developers in facilitating the deployment of smart city solutions across the region.

The initiative with NeXgen falls in line with and builds on the establishment in 2014 of the Zain Digital Frontier and Innovation (ZDFI) business unit, which is charged with launching Zain into the digital space with the view to growing the company through new innovative business streams that add to Zain’s customer service offerings. ZDFI primarily focuses on the areas of innovation; digital services; corporate venturing; and smart cities.

Zain has already identified substantial incremental revenue opportunities from the investment in smart city deployments in the Gulf region, and the strategic cooperation with NeXgen Group will initially focus on smart city opportunities in key Zain operating markets.

The cooperation will focus on delivering smart city technology solutions as a service and will include design and integration for applications including smart living in smart districts, smart safety and security, and smart education.

Nokia today outlined its strategy for seizing the opportunities of a programmable world, and rounded off its launch line-up for Mobile World Congress (MWC) by unveiling the innovative predictive marketing solution, which lets operators tap growing amounts of data to offer smarter services, boost revenues and improve customer loyalty.

At a media and analyst briefing on the eve of MWC, Nokia President and CEO Rajeev Suri outlined the transformational steps Nokia has taken since the sale of substantially all of its Devices & Services business and rebirth as a company focused on a world of connected people and things.

Suri also launched Nokia’s predictive marketing solution, part of the company’s increasing focus on analytics which tap the vast amount of data available to provide a richer picture of mobile service experiences and ways that information can benefit both people and operators.

The predictive marketing solution leverages the capabilities and know-how of Nokia Networks’ Customer Experience Management and the Mobile Marketing Suite from mapping and location intelligence unit HERE, bringing a contextual element to data and the opportunity to very quickly set up personalised offers for services tailored to individual customer needs.

Predictive marketing is one of the many opportunities Nokia sees in big data and analytics, and part of the five blockbuster trends the company is discussing at Mobile World Congress 2015. In Barcelona, Nokia will also show how the telco cloud can help operators keep pace with the Internet world; how ultra-dense networks can ensure performance and meet growing capacity demands; explain how the latest application of location information can improve driving safety; and how to connect and manage the Internet of Things.

Mobily has announced that its Board of Directors convened on February 24, 2015 and resolved, after reviewing the report of the Audit Committee, to discharge Khalid Al Kaf from his positions as managing director and CEO of the company effective immediately, and while reserving the company rights to revert against him. It was reported that Al Kaf submitted his resignation letter to the board on February 21, 2015 following his suspension in November 2014 pending an investigation into accounting errors.

At the time, Mobily announced a restatement of its results that it blamed on accounting errors, wiping out SAR 1.43 billion (US$381 million) of previously reported profits and sending its share price tumbling.

Al Kaf was suspended pending Mobily’s audit committee completing its investigation into the accounting errors.