The government of Togo has authorised plans to award a third mobile operator licence for the country. It is currently carrying out a feasibility study into how to carry out the process.

The ministry is yet to publish a detailed schedule, though the process should lead to a tender.

Currently the country has the two mobile networks – the state owned Togo Cellulaire, and Moov which is majority owned by Etisalat.

Orange was granted an operating licence in 2008, but it is not clear what happened to that.

Togo is one of the smallest countries in West Africa, and its population of 6.5 million.

Intigral, the digital media, content and services company, has announced the appointment of Henri Holm as chief financial officer. Holm will work closely with the company’s leadership to ensure Intigral realises its strong growth potential over the coming years.

Holm has 20 years of international management experience in start-ups, mobile Internet, consumer electronics, manufacturing, distribution, retail and brand management. His most recent position was as senior vice president, Asia operations for Rovio based in Hong Kong.

BlackBerry has posted a deep slump in its first quarter revenues, but also announced an unexpected profit, which sent its share price soaring.

The company’s shares jumped by 12 per cent in early trading after it announced a net profit of US$23 million for fiscal Q1 to the end of May.

However, revenues plunged by 69 per cent to US$966 million. The revenue breakdown for the quarter was approximately 39 per cent for hardware, 54 per cent for services and seven per cent for software and other revenue.

The company said that cost cutting led to higher margins and the turnaround in profitability.

Smartphone sales, however, continue to slide. During Q1, around 2.6 million BlackBerry smartphones were sold through to end customers, compared with 3.4 million the previous quarter.

The company ended the period with cash and investments of US$3.1 billion.

Mobinil is reported to have selected four companies in a short list of bidders for its mobile towers sale.

Mobinil managing director Ive Gotieh told the Zawya news agency that the company is planning on selecting one of the companies by the end of July.

He confirmed that at least one of the bidders is an Egyptian company, and that as with other such deals globally, the new tower owner will be able to lease capacity to rival mobile networks.

Last year it was suggested that around 3,000 towers could be up for sale, which would have an estimated valuation of US$450 million. The sale, as rumoured, would therefore be for the bulk of the towers, excepting some key units in urban areas.

Mobinil is majority owned by Orange.

Zain says that it has tested the country’s first voice over LTE (VoLTE) service, based on equipment supplied by Huawei and Nokia (NSN).

Zain said that it tested VoLTE in live experiences in order to showcase the technology’s calling capability in preparation for commercial VoLTE services in the near future.

The company is waiting for suitable handsets to be released.

At the end of last year, Zain announced its intention to launch a commercial LTE-A network in the country.