Etisalat Group has named Serkan Okandan as the deputy CEO of Mobily, though Okandan will continue his duties as chief financial officer for the Etisalat Group.

Okandan joined Etisalat in January 2012 as the Group CFO, and he represents Etisalat Group in the boards of PTCL in Pakistan, Maroc Telecom in Morocco and Etisalat Nigeria. Prior to joining Etisalat Group, Okandan held the position of Group CFO for Turkcell.

Forecasts quoted by Ericsson’s president of the Middle East, Rafiah Ibrahim, suggest that the number of mobile broadband subscriptions globally will rise from 2.2 billion in 2013 to 7.6 billion in 2019. Mobile subscribers are set to rise to 9.2 billion from 6.8 billion over the same period, with the number of PC, tablets and routers rising from 300 million and 700 million.

Speaking from the Ericsson stand at Gitex in Dubai, Ibrahim stated that 40 per cent of all mobile traffic globally is routed over networks supplied by Ericsson.

“We are number one in mobile infrastructure, OSS/BSS, services, and media delivery and TV, and we remain committed to being the ICT transformation partner of choice, bringing the Networked Society to life.”

Ibrahim also described that there are a number of mega trends that the global telecom industry is currently following, which are that the customer experience is in focus; superior network performance is a key differentiator; LTE is a reality; and mobile video traffic is a high growth area.

Orange is reported to be eyeing a public offering of its African unit, as it looks to free-up funds from the fast-growing business to support its operations in its more mature European markets.

According to Bloomberg, the talks are at an early stage, and it is not clear if such a move would also include Orange’s assets in the Middle East. It is also not certain how big a stake in the business would be offered.

Newspaper L’Agefi said that finance head Ramon Fernandez and European head Gervais Pellissier had discussed the move in meetings with investors.

Africa and the Middle East has been the driver of Orange’s growth in recent years – the company’s H1 2014 results showed it has 91.8 million mobile customers in the region, with revenue increasing by 7.4 per cent to €2.1 billion (US$2.65 billion).

In contrast, it saw revenue declines across its core European operations, including France, Spain and Poland.

Orange has already inked a deal to offload its Ugandan business, and has said that its Kenyan operation is “under study”, as part of its strategy to be a top-two player in the markets where it operates.

The company is looking at opportunities in markets including Mauritania and Togo.

UAE telco, Du has announced achieving Voice over LTE (VoLTE) functionality in its live network recently, following the deployment of Nokia’s VoLTE solution and Professional Services.

Nokia designed, tested and integrated VoLTE into Du’s multi-vendor LTE network and achieved the implementation in just 80 days, marking this as the world’s fastest implementation.

Recent tests in Nokia Networks Smart Labs show that VoLTE clients are network friendlier than other clients as overall data volume consumed over a period of time show significantly lower consumption for VoLTE, thanks to its more efficient behaviour during stand-by mode. VoLTE clients also consume less smartphone battery compared to other clients and put less signalling load on networks.

Zain Bahrain saw weak demand from investors for its initial share sale despite doubling the amount of time for subscriptions, with only just over a third of the offering sold to the public.

The telco was the first company to go public in Bahrain since 2010, selling a 15 per cent stake at BHD 0.19 (US$0.50) per share to raise BHD 9.1 million.

Money raised from the offering will be used to fund upgrades of Zain Bahrain’s network infrastructure as well as expand its super-fast 4G LTE offering in the kingdom.

Only 16.7 million shares, equivalent to 34.8 percent of the offering, was sold to retail and institutional investors, according to figures provided by Zain Bahrain.

The remaining 31.3 million shares will be acquired by the investment banking arm of Gulf International Bank, which underwrote the initial public offering.

The result came despite the initial two-week subscription period for the share sale being extended by a further two weeks to Sept. 30.

The kingdom’s bourse suffers from poor liquidity, with trading activity the lowest in the Gulf region this year, making it unattractive to companies to list.

However, Zain had to list part of its operations in Bahrain as part of its licence agreement signed in 2003.

Zain held 63 percent of the Bahraini unit prior to the IPO and will maintain majority control following the sale of new shares.