The Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) finally approved a bid by Safaricom and Airtel to acquire the assets and subscribers of Yu, the country’s third-largest mobile operator, which is owned by Essar Telecom.

The approval comes a month after Yu’s two bigger rivals submitted their application to CAK.

Safaricom expressed an interest in buying Essar Telecom’s passive infrastructure (located on 453 sites), while Airtel had its eye on Yu’s GSM licences and subscribers.

However, the industry regulator attached strict conditions on all three companies before the deal can go ahead.

According to allAfrica.com, conditions include the payment of Essar Telecom’s outstanding licence fees. That means both Safaricom and Airtel will each have to pay US$5.4 million.

Yu’s SIM cardholders must also be able to retain their numbers and related contracts during the transition period.

CAK has provided a six-month transition period to allow for the “seamless transfer”.

According to estimates from GSMA Intelligence, Yu had 2.8 million connections at the end of 2013, well behind market-leader Safaricom (20.1 million). Airtel had 5.7 million connections, while Orange (Telkom Kenya), in fourth place, counted 2.3 million.

Telecom Egypt expects that it will sign up around five million customers to its MVNO service within a year of its launch representing about 15 per cent of its existing landline customer base.

The company is expected to be granted a mobile licence to act as an MVNO by the end of June.

As a 45 per cent owner of Vodafone Egypt, Telecom Egypt is widely expected to use the Vodafone network for the wholesale access.

"We have around seven million households subscribing to our landline services, with an average of five people in every house," Telecom Egypt’s general manger for investor relations and internal reporting Mohamed Kamal told local media.

Millicom International Cellular has announced the creation of a tech incubator in Rwanda to develop new digital solutions. The company said the objective is to develop new businesses in which it will take an equity stake.

The incubator, called "Think", will be located in a purpose-built facility in Kigali. It will be the base from which a small number of potential entrepreneurs will be selected by a competitive selection process, application details for which will be announced by the local Tigo operation shortly.

Millicom will provide these entrepreneurs with seed financing, structured training and coaching programmes, access to Tigo technical resources for product testing and trials and support in accessing outside investors and customers.

Last year, Tigo passed the two million subscriber mark having grown by over 25 per cent in 2013 and achieving a 31 per cent market share.

Huawei has released its audited 2013 financial results delivering record sales revenues and net profit. Huawei’s financial performance was strong across all business areas in 2013, achieving steady growth and sales revenues of US$39.4 billion, up 8.5 per cent year-on-year or 11.6 per cent if measured in US dollars, and net profit of US$3.4 billion.

In 2013, Huawei’s carrier network business delivered US$27.4 billion in sales revenue, up four per cent year-on-year. Sales revenues of the enterprise and consumer businesses increased significantly in 2013, by 32.4 per cent and 17.8 per cent to US$2.5 billion and US$9.4 billion, respectively.

Huawei earned 65 per cent of its revenue from markets outside of China in 2013. In the Chinese market, the company achieved US$13.8 billion in sales revenues, up 14.2 per cent year-on-year. On the local level Huawei Middle East is headquartered in Bahrain and has offices across 10 countries with around 4,000 employees—of whom over 60 per cent are local hires. All three of Huawei’s main business groups—carrier network, enterprise and consumer—are active in the region.

In 2013, Huawei invested approximately US$5.06 billion into R&D, which equates to approximately 12.8 per cent of its sales revenue.

In 2014, the technology provider sees the growing penetration of ultra-broadband and mobile broadband, particularly LTE, as an important strategic opportunity. Smart devices will be another key area for the company as they become more and more of an intrinsic necessity to "digital natives" and extensions of people’s sensory systems.

An eye-catching development at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year, was the announcement that a total of eight network operator groups from across the Middle East and Africa had entered a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to facilitate an initiative to proactively explore greater cooperation with respect to infrastructure sharing.

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