Vodacom has reported that in under a month it has managed to more than double the number of LTE-enabled base stations on its network. As of November 19, the company has over 400 LTE-enabled base stations live and is ahead of schedule to meet its target of switching on 500 sites by the end of 2012.

As part of its push to rollout the new technology to cities across South Africa, the company is also pleased to announce the commercial launch of LTE services in Durban. Cape Town is expected to follow before the end of the year.

Durban marks the third city to benefit from LTE after Johannesburg and Pretoria.

LTE was first launched in South Africa by Vodacom in October and the service is currently available to Vodacom contract customers. It will be available to top-up and prepaid customers in 2013. It also requires customers to use a 64K or 128K SIM card.

Ruckus Wireless, a leading supplier of advanced wireless systems for the mobile Internetworking market, announced today it has opened for trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol “RKUS” after launching its initial public offering. Barclays is the Designated Market Maker (DMM) for the company’s stock.

Over the past few years Ruckus Wireless has witnessed tremendous growth in the EMEA region as well as on a global level. The Middle East alone was expected to grow by 14.3 per cent in 2012.

Bharti Airtel today introduced what it claims to be the world’s first intercontinental incoming roaming service that does not include an additional charge by including India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to its current bouquet of One Network services for its African customers. Airtel customers already avail this facility across the company’s mobile network in 17 countries across Africa.

Airtel customers in Africa will not need to register for the One Network service or buy new SIM cards as they will now be automatically provisioned as ‘citizens’ of Airtel’s borderless network across 20 countries in Africa and Asia. This offers opportunities to a base of 60 million Airtel customers in Africa to roam at affordable tariffs in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. By offering free incoming calls whilst roaming, the service ups the ante for global telecom providers as the seamless service across continents is a world-first amongst mobile service providers.

Within 17 African countries, One Network also allows Airtel customers to use their local Airtel SIM cards whilst abroad, giving them access to attractive rates for calls made, access data, enjoy value added services and recharge using local top up vouchers in the country visited.

VimpelCom reported an almost three-fold year-on-year increase in quarterly profit despite sales dipping by six per cent.

The Amsterdam-headquartered operator group reported Q3 net income of US$538 million, up from US$189 million a year ago and ahead of the US$506 million average forecast in an analyst poll by Dow Jones Newswires.

Revenue fell to US$5.75 billion from US$6.10 billion, in line with the analysts’ average forecast.

EBITDA slipped to US$2.53 billion from US$2.57 billion.

The firm blamed the sales decline on “unfavourable currency movements,” noting that year-on-year revenue growth was three per cent on an organic basis.

The total mobile subscriber base increased seven per cent to 212 million.

Russia remained the group’s largest business unit, accounting for US$2.32 billion of sales in the quarter, representing 40 per cent of the total.

Ericsson today announced the appointment of Işıl Yalcin as president for the North East Africa Unit, part of the Ericsson Middle East region. In her new role, Yalcin will be responsible for handling the company’s customer relations, further developing the skill level of employees and focusing on business growth. Based in Ericsson’s Egypt office, Yalcin will oversee the telecom giant’s operations in Egypt, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea.

A Turkish national, Yalcin started her professional career by joining Ericsson in Turkey in 1996. During her tenure, Yalcin held several roles serving multiple business units that specialise in Networks and Operations of broadband, radio access (RAN), and core. Prior to her current role, Yalcin was the vice president and head of RAN overseeing 23 countries in the Middle East region.