Essar Telecommunication has bought out the minority shareholders in its Kenyan subsidiary, giving it full ownership of the firm. It will however have to sell or float a stake later to bring it back within local regulations limiting foreign shareholdings to 80 per cent.

Essar said that it had bought out local businessmen Peter Kibiriti and Jos Konzolo due to their inability to inject hundreds of millions of shillings in shareholder loans to fund Yu’s expansion plans.

The company currently has a waiver on the 80:20 shareholder rules that expires in three years’ time, along with a similar waiver for rival Airtel.

"Considering the capital-intensive nature of the industry, it was difficult for the local shareholders to keep investing in the business at a rapid pace. We are now in the process of having the share transfer done and filing the shareholding change," Madhur Taneja, Essar Kenya CEO said.

Earlier this year, the operator had been looking for fresh investors who could support its network plans, but appears to have opted to buy out the shareholders instead.

Huawei is expected to pull out of the US and will no longer be seeking to win contracts in the country, the firm’s founder Ren Zhengfei has announced.

"If Huawei gets in the middle of US-China relations," and causes problems, "it’s not worth it," Ren said, according to a Chinese transcript of an interview with France’s Les Echos newspaper.

"Therefore, we have decided to exit the U.S. market, and not stay in the middle."

Huawei has struggled to win customers in the US, mainly due to a hostile political environment that has repeatedly warned US firms not to deal with the Chinese company.

A company spokesman later confirmed to Foreign Policy magazine that, "It is true that Huawei has adjusted our priority focus to markets that welcome competition and investment, like Europe."

However, the company is still expected to maintain a R&D facility and may still sell mobile phones in the US, which have not been subjected to the same intense pressure as its network infrastructure sales.

Existing Huawei customer, Japan’s Softbank was forced to promise not to use Huawei equipment in the US in order to secure its takeover bid for Sprint, which may have been the point at which the Chinese firm decided the country simply is not worth the challenges.

Huawei has repeatedly denied allegations that it inserts back-doors and exploits for the Chinese military into its network infrastructure.

Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) says that the necessary approvals for the previously announced sale of its business in the Seychelles to Batelco Group have not been granted.

Accordingly, that disposal did not complete by the long-stop date agreed with Batelco and CWC will be considering its options for the Seychelles business.

CWC did not elaborate on why the regulatory approvals were not granted.

The Seychelles sale was part of a wider agreement by CWC to sell its operations in Maldives, the Channel Islands and Isle of Man, South Atlantic, and Diego Garcia.

This is the second deal between the two companies to unravel – after CWC had to reverse a deal to sell a 25 per cent stake in its Monaco subsidiary to Batelco.

Bharti Airtel says that its African subsidiaries will join the trade group, the Bridge Alliance – which is made up of 14 operators serving over 500 million customers.

Andre Beyers, chief marketing officer at Airtel Africa said the new initiative would help the company improve mobile business operations at an international level.

"It is important to be part of a strong alliance which can enable our enterprise customers to achieve full visibility of their regional mobile expenses for better check and control of corporate mobile spend," Beyers said.

"Additionally, being part of Bridge Alliance enables customers of Airtel Africa opcos to enjoy forward-thinking roaming services extended to new countries in Asia and beyond," he added.

Bridge Alliance members leverage their partnership to develop and launch enterprise and roaming services.

Wataniya Telecom Maldives has launched LTE services, for the first time in the Maldives following a trial service that started in April.

Wataniya customers using the 4G network will be able to access download speeds of up to 15 Mbps.

Wataniya launched the 4G network in April at the ICT Connect Expo. The first package, wNet 4G, was launched in June 2013 as part of the ‘Wataniya for Business’ portfolio for small and medium sized enterprises.

The network upgrade was provided by Huawei as part of a wider network modernisation contract signed last year.