Vodacom has become the first network in South Africa to offer LTE services to all its customers. 

Vodacom was the first operator to launch commercial LTE services in South Africa in October 2012.

The service was initially available to contract customers, but with increased LTE coverage and a much wider range of devices now available, LTE services have now also been made available to prepaid and top up customers.

"We started out with 70 LTE capable base stations in Gauteng, and just five months on we’ve now got approaching 600 live LTE sites covering Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria and Durban. Another 400 are planned by the end of the year,” said Shameel Joosub, Vodacom CEO.

Vodacom is investing more than ZAR6 billion (US$648 million) per year in South Africa, adding extensively to the network of 3G base stations as well as building LTE coverage. At current rates, the number of 3G base stations is growing at around 25 per cent per year.

Batelco has selected Ericsson as the sole vendor in the company’s deployment of its 4G/LTE network in Bahrain. The agreement includes LTE radio access network, evolved packet core and an upgrade of the circuit-switched core and operations support system to back the new LTE services. Utilising Ericsson’s end-to-end LTE solution, Batelco has been able to provide its customers with fast speed connectivity and boosted experience, enabling true high-speed Internet, and rich multimedia applications such as high definition (HD) video streaming and chatting, cloud services and conferencing and high definition applications.

Ericsson and Batelco have enjoyed numerous successful partnerships over the past twenty years, as Ericsson has been supporting the telco with services and solutions to deploy GSM and WCDMA services and the recent mobile broadband uptake brought on by the popularity of smartphones.

Saudi telecom regulator, Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), expects to post the Q&A document compiled from responses to its mobile virtual network (MVNO) licensing process on March 25. The document is set to be posted on its website, www.citc.gov.sa

Earlier the CITC announced that due to requests from some interested parties to postpone the deadline for submitting applications to the MVNO request for application, the regulator has extended the deadline to apply for a MVNO licence to 3.00 p.m. (local time), May 11, 2013 from May 4.

Siemens is likely to exit the Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) joint venture this year, a senior executive from the German company has said.

Dow Jones Newswires reports that Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser said this week the company plans to leave the joint venture with Nokia and that 2013 “is the time for Siemens to help NSN to move into a better place”.

The shareholder pact for NSN expires in April, which would allow both companies to dispose of their stakes. However, Kaeser said the venture will remain for the time being.

Siemens has been divesting its telecom assets in the JV over the past few years, according to the report.

NSN has posted losses since it was founded in 2007, but Kaeser said the restructuring measures have succeeded in making the company profitable.

A rapidly increasing customer base helped mobile operator Viva Kuwait make an annual profit for the first time in 2012, four years after the STC Group affiliate launched services.

Unlisted Viva reported a net profit of KWD3.9 million (US$13.69 million) for 2012. This compares with a net loss of KWD14.4 million in 2011.

The operator, which competes with Zain and Ooredoo subsidiary Wataniya, said its customer base rose by 60 per cent to 1.6 million in 2012, enabling it to boost its market share to 29 per cent from 20 per cent.

Kuwait has no telecom regulator and market share figures are disputed by the rival operators – former monopoly Zain puts its share at 42 per cent, with Viva and Wataniya on 21 and 37 per cent respectively.

Viva said its 2012 cash flow was KWD32.2 million, up from KWD72,000 a year earlier. It did not publish its annual revenue.

STC owns 26 per cent of Viva, which has yet to list on the Kuwait bourse.