Etisalat is backing its Saudi Arabian affiliate Mobily after authorities banned it from selling prepaid SIM cards, reports Reuters.

The ban was imposed by the Saudi regulator to force Mobily to meet "prepaid service provisioning requirements" outlined in an order regarding SIM registration rules made in September. If the ban on prepaid SIMs isn’t resolved quickly it could hurt revenue, according to analysts.

Etisalat CEO Ahmad Julfar told Reuters that the company is committed to its relationship with Mobily. Julfar also reiterated his company’s desire to increase its stake in Mobily if there is an opportunity to do so. Etisalat currently holds a 28 per cent stake in the Saudi number-two operator.

The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), the majority shareholder in mobile operator Roshan in Afghanistan, is set to launch a mobile operator in East Africa early in 2013, a reliable source confirmed to Comm.

AKFED is an international development agency dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship and building economically sound enterprises in the developing world. The fund operates as a network of affiliates with more than 90 separate project companies employing over 30,000 people, with revenues of US$2.3 billion in 2010. It is active in 16 countries in the developing world: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Kyrgyz Republic, Mali, Mozambique, Pakistan, Senegal, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania and Uganda.

“Given AKFED’s presence in a number of activities in East Africa, ranging from hospitality, retail, and financial services, the fund has been able to attain a mobile licence in an East African country, which it intends to activate in the January/February 2013 time-frame,” the informed source said.

With commercial activities in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania the mobile licence is set to have been awarded in one of these three countries, with AKFED being confident it will be able to leverage its local contacts and networks in other industries in order to succeed in an ‘ultra-competitive’ telecom market.

Shares in Research In Motion (RIM) surged by 18 per cent on November 22 on the back of another endorsement of the company’s as-yet-unseen new BlackBerry line.

Kris Thompson, a National Bank analyst in Toronto, estimated that the firm will sell 35.5 million BlackBerry 10 (BB10) smartphones in the next fiscal year, up from a previous estimate of 31.6 million.

In a research note, Thompson said he had revised his estimate to account for an additional month of availability and “a little extra for the positive sentiment building in the industry from our discussions.”

"The new management team is executing by maintaining the BlackBerry subscriber base, managing costs and cash, and seemingly readying a February 2013 BB10 global platform launch," he added.

According to Bloomberg, RIM’s shares on the Toronto bourse rose by the largest gain since April 2009 – and reduced the stock’s loss this year to 19 per cent.

Earlier this week, RIM had been boosted by comments from Jefferies & Co analyst Peter Misek – usually a fierce critic – who noted that operators had adopted “much more positive view of BB10 than expected”.

The first BB10 smartphones will be unveiled by RIM at a launch event on January 30, and are likely to ship the following month.

“Most are greatly underestimating how many loyal subscribers will upgrade to BB10 in calendar 2013,” Ironfire Capital’s Eric Jackson told Bloomberg. “All those pending upgrades are currently not factored into the stock.”

Qatar Telecom (Qtel) and QIB today signed a US$500 million Islamic finance deal, marking the first Islamic finance arrangement signed by Qtel.

QIB assumed the role of Sole Mandated Lead Arranger and Investment Agent for the deal. The financing is an 18-month Sharia-compliant “Revolving Murabaha”.

Bharti Airtel has said it has undertaken an end-to-end network transformation programme across its mobile operations in 16 African countries that is the largest of its kind on the African continent. In partnership with Ericsson, the programme involved a comprehensive upgrade and expansion of network elements on all of Airtel’s African operations, including switching, radio, network management, data, charging, and consumer-services platforms and systems.

This network transformation is set to enhance Airtel’s network capacity and robustness and help deliver best-in-class services to customers at affordable rates. This also makes Airtel’s networks fully ready for next generation services that include high speed data and value added services. 

In addition, a full upgrade of the charging platforms across all operations was implemented introducing the latest version of Ericsson’s Charging System, enabling Airtel to offer subscribers new and innovative value-added services such as mobile wallets.

Backed by 12,000 consulting and systems integration professionals across the world, over one hundred resources worked onsite to ensure successful delivery of this complex project – the largest network modernisation programme in Africa’s telecom history. Ericsson’s systems integration organisation delivers more than 1,500 systems integration projects per year in multi-vendor and multiple-technology environments.

This transformation programme follows the 2011 announcement of an on-going five-year multi-country managed services agreement, wherein Ericsson would manage and optimise Airtel’s mobile networks across Africa.