UAE telco Du has confirmed that it will be launching its LTE service in July, although the company did not offer any details about what tariffs it is planning to offer.

The operator completed its first LTE pilot trials in April 2011. Coverage is expected to reach just under 28 per cent of the population of the country.

"Du is focusing more on the data than the voice," the telco’s chief commercial officer Farid Faraidooni told Gulf News. "We are investing heavily on infrastructure for mobile broadband customers."

The LTE network will operate in the 1800MHz spectrum band.

The LTE launch comes after Du’s launch of 42 Mbps mobile broadband services, currently the fastest in the country, after having upgraded its network to DC-HSPA+ technology.

Telefonica has sold almost half its stake in China Unicom back to the Chinese operator in a deal worth US$1.4 billion.

The Spanish-based operator said in a regulatory filing that the sale "forms part of the proactive management of its asset portfolio." However, it also appears linked to efforts by the operator to raise funds to pay-down debt and protect against the effects of the deepening Eurozone crisis, which led to an EU bailout package for the Spanish banks over the weekend.

Telefonica’s stake in the Chinese number-two operator falls to 5.01 per cent, from 9.57 per cent previously. The deal is expected to close in July, subject to regulatory approval.

Telefonica said it remains committed to the market in China, while its chairman, César Alierta, will retain his position as a Unicom director.

The Chinese deal follows an announcement that Telefonica plans to sell-off assets in German and Latin America.

The firm said at the time it is “accelerating the disposal process of non-core assets” in order to “increase its financial flexibility” and maintain “an attractive remuneration for its shareholders.”

Telefonica’s market value has slumped by almost €50 billion (US$63 billion) over the last 18 months and the firm had net debt of €57.1 billion at the end of March.

Huawei and ZTE have been banned from tendering for state contracts in Algeria for two years and been fined by a local court after being found guilty of bribing executives at the state owned telecom operator, Algérie Télécom.

Local media reports named a former executive at the telco, Mohamed Boukhari and a businessman, Chami Madjdoub as being found guilty of receiving illegal payments and money laundering to conceal the sources of those payments.

The alleged bribery took place between 2003 and 2006 and the two men have been sentenced to 18 years in prison, have had their property confiscated, and been fined DZD 5 million (US$64,000) each.

The two companies have themselves also been fined DZD3 million each and banned from tendering with state-owned companies for two years.

Three Chinese officials, Dong Tao, Chen Zhibo and Xiao Chuhfa were sentenced in their absence to 10 years in prison and an international arrest warrant has been issued for their extradition back to the country.

The two companies denied the allegations and presented themselves as victims of the bribery as well.

South Africa’s fixed-line incumbent Telkom SA said that its growing mobile business weighed on its earnings, as the company looks to position itself for future growth.

In a statement, the telco noted: “we are committed to the mobile business and, although tactics may change from time to time, the broader strategy to defend erosion in our fixed-line business while growing converged delivery channels to our customers remains a key priority.”

The mobile unit (which trades as 8ta) saw an EBITDA loss of ZAR2.4 billion (US$283 million) for the year to March 31, 2012 on revenue of ZAR1.2 billion, compared with revenue of ZAR81 million in fiscal 2011 – it first launched in October 2010. Its active subscriber base grew by 213.2 per cent to 1.48 million.

Telkom noted that while capitalising on data growth is “a core feature of our mobile strategy,” it is essential that this is done in a way that does not lead to cannibalisation of its other products – “instead we must offer services that reward the customer for using Telkom’s products with varying levels of incentives depending on the customers’ level of loyalty.”

Of its active mobile customer base, around 70 per cent have prepaid accounts. These customers have an ARPU of ZAR20.89 compared with ZAR206.83 for contract customers. Blended mobile ARPU is ZAR68.86.

The company now has 1,782 base stations in place, up 83.7 per cent from the 970 at March 31, 2011. Of these, 1,351 are “on air.” Telkom noted “challenges in terms of finding adequate power on certain of the remaining base stations.”

For 2013, Telkom is looking to reduce its EBITDA losses in mobile by around 20 per cent, and invest ZAR2 billion – ZAR2.5 billion in capital expenditure. In fiscal 2012, mobile capex was ZAR3.9 billion.
The period also saw the company finally dispose of its Nigerian mobile unit Multi-Links, which resulted in a loss of ZAR896 million. It said that “we believe that the negative financial and legal impacts associated with retaining Multi-Links would have had a far more negative impact on the group than divesting as quickly and proficiently as we did.”

On a group level, the company reported a net loss attributable to shareholders of ZAR204 million, compared with a profit of ZAR1.1 billion to March 31, 2011, on total revenue of ZAR33.7 billion, compared with ZAR33.9 billion.

The UK mobile networks, Vodafone and O2 have announced plans to combine the passive parts of their network infrastructure to create one national grid running each operator’s independent spectrum.

The two companies already share some elements of their network infrastructure under an agreement that was signed in March 2009.

The operators also expect that the shared network will be able to deploy LTE coverage up to two years before the anticipated regulatory requirement of 98 per cent population coverage by 2017.

Both companies will retain complete control over their wireless spectrum, intelligent core networks and customer data. They will continue to actively compete with each other in all products and services, enabled through the ‘intelligent’ parts of their networks.

A new 50/50 joint venture company will be created through the consolidation of both O2 and Vodafone’s existing basic network infrastructure, including towers and masts, which will be transferred to the joint venture or decommissioned over time. Under the proposals, both companies will have access to a single grid of 18,500 masts representing an increase in sites of more than 40 per cent for each operator. The joint venture will also be responsible for the building of new sites needed to extend coverage into rural and remote areas.

There will be opportunities for the decommissioning of duplicate sites and, as a result, the two companies expect there will be a more than 10 per cent overall reduction in the total number of sites, in the UK, used by the two operators.

Each operator will take the responsibility for design, management and maintenance of the radio equipment as well as local transmission in one half of the country. O2 will manage and maintain these elements in the East (including Northern Ireland and most of Scotland) and Vodafone in the West (including Wales).

The two companies are in discussions with Ofcom and intend to establish the joint venture and network sharing company later this year.