African towers operator IHS Holding says that it has raised an additional US$130 million from investors.

The capital raised is in addition to the US$490 million of debt and equity announced in March and is with existing investors.

IHS said that it will use the funds to accelerate its plans for expansion into new and existing markets.

The company has now raised more over US$1.6 billion from investors over the past year as it buys up tower assets from mobile networks across the continent.

One of its main backers is South Africa based Wendel which said in a statement that it had pumped US$47 million into the company in its latest funding round, taking the investment company’s stake in IHS to US$475 million.

Following this transaction, Wendel remains IHS’s largest shareholder with more than 35% of the capital of the company.

VimpelCom has settled the long-running dispute over the ownership of the Algerian mobile network it acquired when it bought Naguib Sawiris’ Orascom Telecom in 2010 in a US$6 billion deal.

That deal was modified to take into account the difficulty of the situation in Algeria, where the government was seeking to nationalise Orascom’s local subsidiary, Djezzy in a tax dispute.

The matter has finally been resolved.

As a result, Djezzy will be allowed to make a long delayed dividend payment to its Egyptian owners, Global Telecom Holding (formerly Orascom Telecom) of US$1.86 billion.

GTH will then sell a 51 per cent stake in the Algerian mobile network, Djezzy to the Algerian government for US$2.64 billion.

The total dividends and proceeds due to GTH at closing are expected to amount to US$4 billion, net of all taxes and after the settlement of all outstanding disputes between the parties and the payment of associated fines.

That is approximately what VimpelCom had always asked for, as it had previously indicated that it would not accept a valuation of less than US$7.8 billion for the entire company.

All proceeds will be used to pay down the outstanding shareholder loans provided by VimpelCom to GTH.

Although the Algerian government will own a majority stake in Djezzy, it will continue to be managed by GTH and, as a result, both GTH and VimpelCom will continue to fully consolidate Djezzy in their financial accounts.

Jordan is expected to have in place its first LTE network by the end of this year after Zain was awarded the necessary licence.

Zain Jordan was the sole qualified bidder in the controversial 4G licence tender, and paid JD142 million (US$200 million) for the licence, and a further JD50 million for additional 3G radio spectrum.

"Zain Jordan has about eight to nine months to launch the service commercially in the kingdom," ICT minister Azzam Sleit said.

Two new entrants applied for 4G licences, but were rejected on technical grounds, while the other two incumbent network operators – Orange and Umniah – declined to bid. There has been controversy over the licence conditions and the networks had opposed the issuance of the licences as premature.

The tender for the 4G licences was announced last June, with bids due by last October. The results were expected in January, but were delayed.

The two remaining network operators can still apply for licenses at a later date.

Egypt’s state controlled landline operator Telecom Egypt is to pay six per cent of the revenues from its soon-to-launch MVNO to the telecom regulator as part of its licence fee.

The revelation of the additional costs on top of the EGP2.5 billion (US$360 million) MVNO licence fee were revealed by the head of the regulator, Hisham El-Alayleyi.

Telecom Egypt, which is 80 per cent owned by the government, and also owns a 45 per cent stake in Vodafone Egypt, is expected to launch its MVNO within the next few months.

It has also been given a year to resolve its stake in Vodafone, although the company has asked for two years, as that would then tie-in with the planned LTE spectrum auction.

ZTE has reported that its first quarter profit more than tripled as the company said it posted increased revenue amid growth in the global 4G market.

Net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was RMB622 million (US$100 million) in the first quarter, an increase of 203.5 per cent from a year earlier, and at the higher end of forecasts released by the company a couple of weeks ago.

Revenue rose 5.5 per cent to RMB 19.5 billion.

The company also forecast that first half profits will rise by between 158-223 per cent.