Bangladesh’s telecom regulator has finalised the details for the country’s 3G licence auction, and will send the proposals to the government for approval later this week.

The proposals call for a total of four 3G licences to be awarded, which would leave three of the incumbent mobile networks without a concession.

The state-owned Teletalk will be granted an automatic licence, and three other licences will be granted – one to a new entrant, and two to the incumbent operators.

Last year, the telecom minister Raziuddin Ahmed Razu also said that the state-owned telco would receive a six month exclusivity period before the other networks would be permitted to launch their services.

There are five GSM operators in Bangladesh and two CDMA players.

Telkom Kenya is seeking an emergency loan of US$69 million from its shareholders – the Kenyan government and France Telecom – to stave off a liquidity crisis that could otherwise see it default on its loans.

In total, the company is reported by the East African newspaper to be seeking an additional US$125 million from its shareholders this year as well as reductions in repayments of its existing shareholder loans.

The company has warned that it will not be able to pay suppliers if it is unable to raise the funds.

The emergency loan is required to repay two unsecured loans Telkom Kenya took from Standard Chartered Bank amounting to US$616 million, which is due in the next two months. It also owes US$122 million in an overdraft loan, which is due for renewal in August 2012 in addition to a US$81 million one-year loan due for renewal in November.

Telkom Kenya is 49 per cent owned by the government and 51 per cent by France Telecom.

It was also separately reported that one of the two deputy CEO’s Jane Karuku has left the company with immediate effect, although she was already serving a resignation period.

On the eve of international arbitration, Swaziland’s state-owned telco, SPTC has shut-down its mobile network after seemingly accepting that the service breached an agreement signed with MTN to be the monopoly provider of mobile services.

SPTC is also a shareholder in Swazi MTN.

Citing sources at the company, the Times newspaper reported that SPTC is said to have offered to withdraw the mobile and Fixedfone services after conceding that these two projects were in breach of the joint venture agreement entered into with Swazi MTN in 1997.

The joint venture between the two companies bared Swazi MTN shareholders from competing with it in the mobile market.

Tata Communications today announced the completion of the world’s first round-the-world fibre optic cable network with the official launch of its Tata Global Network – Eurasia (TGN-EA) cable. The cable connects Europe to India, through Egypt, bringing increased capacity, resilience and enhanced communications links to not only the Middle East, but to the rest of the world.

The completion of the final link across Egypt enables Tata Communications to offer its customers unique access to a wholly-owned express route cable from Europe to India with improved latency, redundancy and scalability. In conjunction with the company’s recently launched TGN-Gulf these routes will cater to the increasing demand for voice, video and data services in and out of the Gulf region.

The completion of the final TGN-EA link follows significant investment from Tata Communications in its global network in recent years. The TGN-EA cable system now interconnects Europe, India, the Gulf and Middle East seamlessly with the rest of the world while consistently providing higher quality bandwidth on a global scale. Tata Communications owns and operates the world’s largest subsea cable network which reaches countries representing 99.7 per cent of the world’s GDP.

The 9,280 km TGN-EA system which links Europe and India, running across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, uses fibre-optic technology based on microscopic glass fibres as thin as a strand of human hair, and offers customers the lowest levels of latency with RTD around 92 msec with speeds from 2Mbit/s to 10Gbit/s available.

STC has selected Nokia Siemens Networks(NSN) to upgrade its nationwide GSM and 3G networks and expand its commercial 4G (TD-LTE) network. NSN is now responsible for building one-third of STC’s nationwide 4G network. STC announced the launch of its commercial 4G network using TD-LTE equipment from NSN in September 2011.

As part of the contract, NSN is modernising STC’s GSM and 3G networks to its Single RAN (radio access network) platform based on the Flexi Multiradio Base Station. The company is deploying its 4G radio network infrastructure across 2,500 STC sites over the next two years. NSN is also providing its FlexiPacket Microwave transport platform, which is a common transport medium for STC’s GSM, 3G and 4G networks with on-air speed of up to 400Mbps.

NSN’s Self-Organising Networks (SON) suite, part of the company’s Liquid Radio, enables straightforward plug-and-play 4G base station rollout. This results in operational and capital cost savings, while also improving customer experience by ensuring 4G base stations always deliver their peak performance.

As part of the contract, NSN is also upgrading its NetAct network management system to enable effective monitoring, management and operation of STC’s GSM, 3G and 4G networks. In addition, the company is providing services such as network implementation with project management capabilities for rapid and efficient network roll-out. It is also providing care services that include hardware, software maintenance and competence development. NSN already operates and optimises STC’s GSM and 3G radio networks as part of a separate managed services contract.