France Telecom announced that Q113 revenues fell by 5.9 per cent to €10.3 billion (US$13.4 billion), while its EBITDA also fell by nine per cent to €3.1 billion as the company was hurt by intensive competition in its home market.

In France, the decline in mobile services revenues was 2.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2013, affected by price reductions and the development of SIM-only offers. In Spain, revenues rose by 3.3 per cent, led by growth in the fixed broadband and mobile services customer bases. In Poland, the decline in mobile services revenues was limited to 2.2 per cent in Q113, while fixed broadband climbed 9.3 per cent.

In the rest of Europe, revenues increased 2.6 per cent, lifted by mobile Internet browsing and smartphone sales. In Africa and the Middle East revenues grew 3.3per cent, led by Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Guinea and Niger.

The Group added 5.9 million customers year-on-year, taking its total to 229.8 million at the end of March.

In the Enterprise segment, revenues declined 5.3 per cent in Q1 due to intensified competition and difficult economic conditions in Europe.

Capital expenditure of €1.15 billion was up 6.5 per cent, with the acceleration of investment in fixed and mobile high-speed broadband services (fibre and 4G), particularly in France.

Looking ahead, the company confirmed that it is looking at possible acquisitions in its existing markets, but did not outline any possible targets.

Bharti Airtel has announced a deal that will see its Ugandan subsidiary merging with the local Warid Telecom mobile network.

Airtel said that the transaction will further consolidate its position as the second largest mobile operator in Uganda with a combined customer base of over 7.4 million and market share of over 39 per cent.

Airtel currently has 4.6 million customers in Uganda, while Warid has 2.8 million customers.

Speaking on the agreement, Manoj Kohli, MD and CEO (International) of Bharti Airtel said the agreement happens to be the first in-market acquisition in Bharti Airtel’s history.

The agreement is subject to regulatory and statutory approvals.

In mid-2011, Essar Group had attempted to acquire Warid Telecom’s networks in Uganda and Congo but has been forced to cancel the purchase after it was unable to secure regulatory approval for the transaction.

Essar Group agreed to purchase the networks from Warid Telecom in November 2009 for US$318 million, but the two companies cancelled the deal as, “certain condition precedents pertaining to government clearance were not met”.

Zain Group today announced the signing of a three-year US$700 million revolving credit facility to meet the company’s short to medium term funding needs for general corporate purposes.

Al Khalij Commercial Bank, Ahli United Bank, Arab Bank, Emirates NBD Capital Limited, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, Qatar National Bank Group and Standard Chartered Bank acted as the mandated lead arrangers. Standard Chartered Bank and QNB Group also acted as joint coordinators. QNB Group is the facility agent.

In recent years Zain has invested heavily in upgrading its mobile networks and in rolling out new services across all its operations. Most recently, the company introduced 4G LTE broadband services to several key markets namely Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain as well as extensively upgrading and expanding networks in Iraq, Jordan, Sudan and South Sudan.

Intel Corporation and Etisalat Misr have announced the launch of the Middle East’s first smartphone with Intel Inside, the new Etisalat E-20 smartphone. The Etisalat E-20 smartphone is targeted at the growing number of smartphone buyers in the Middle East and North Africa region. In Egypt alone there are more than 91 million mobile subscribers and mobile penetration has increased to 116.94 per cent.

The handset will be available at all Etisalat stores across Egypt, and is equipped with the Intel Atom Z2420 processor with Intel Hyper-Threading technology that can achieve speeds of up to 1.2GHz. The powerful device offers consumers fast web browsing, impressive multimedia capabilities and a great Android applications experience.

The device is housed in a compact design and features a 3.5-inch touchscreen display for crisp text and images, support for FM radio and an expandable memory slot for greater flexibility, and HSPA+ modem support with Intel’s XMM 6265 modem for global roaming.

Alcatel-Lucent has been selected by Du to build the second phase of a high-speed 100G coherent optical transport network (OTN) throughout the UAE.

The new optical transport network will enable the UAE telco to dramatically boost the speed and capacity of its existing network, and thanks to the efficiency of OTN sub-wavelength grooming, it will support the booming explosion of data traffic generated by the proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets in the most economical way.

Du will use Alcatel-Lucent’s 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) to address the booming demand for high-bandwidth data services such as high-definition video streaming, next-generation mobile broadband applications and cloud services.

Network capacity and performance will be significantly boosted by taking advantage of unique Bell Labs silicon innovations to support data speeds of 100 gigabits-per-second on each of the 88 wavelengths.