Batelco is reported to be considering a sale and lease back deal for its tower assets in Bahrain and Jordan, a banking source familiar with the matter said, in a move that would raise funds for potential acquisitions.

Batelco has hired Citigroup to help with the sale process, the banking source said. The deal may generate between U$200 million to US$300 million for the telco.

A formal bidding process is on and Batelco is reported to have received expressions of interest from a number of bidders.

"We are exploring all options to unlock value for our business and the towers is one of those options, but we have not made a decision on whether to lease them back or keep them – we are still going through the deliberations," Peter Kaliaropoulos, Batelco chief executive of strategic assignments, is quoted as saying earlier in the week.

"We have no debt, so extra funds we derive — should we proceed with monetising the towers — will go towards future acquisitions because it reduces the cost of funding for us."

Research In Motion (RIM) announced it will record a pre-tax provision of US$485 million due to poor sales of its Playbook tablets, and also warned that sales of all its products in the fourth quarter will be below that achieved in the third.

RIM has a high level of Blackberry Playbook inventory, having sold approximately 150,000 PlayBook tablets into the channels in Q311.

"RIM is committed to the BlackBerry PlayBook and believes the tablet market is still in its infancy. Although a number of factors have led to the need for an inventory provision in the third quarter, we believe the PlayBook, which will be further enhanced with the upcoming PlayBook OS 2.0 software, is a compelling tablet for consumers, which also offers unique security and manageability features for the enterprise," said Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of RIM.

While the company is still in the process of finalising its Q3 financial results, it shipped approximately 14.1 million BlackBerry smartphones in the quarter ended November 26, 2011, which was in line with previous guidance of between 13.5-14.5 million. Adjusted revenue in the third quarter, excluding a charge against revenue of approximately US$50 million related to the service outage that occurred in the quarter, is expected to be slightly lower than the previously guided range of US$5.3-5.6 billion, reflecting product mix and the impact of PlayBook sell-through programmes in the quarter. Gross margin is expected to be in line with previous guidance of approximately 37 per cent.

Airtel announced it has signed up its 50 millionth mobile customer in Africa, having achieved this milestone within 17 months of acquiring Zain’s mobile operations in 16 African countries. The India-based company has added 14 million new mobile customers since taking over operations in Africa, equating to just under 824,000 additions a month.

“The milestone demonstrates our continued dedication and commitment to Africa," said Manoj Kohli, CEO (International) and joint MD, Bharti Airtel.

Airtel Africa claims to have invested approximately US$1 billion in network infrastructure during the current financial year, having been awarded twelve 3G licences across its operations.

Earlier this year; the company expanded its footprint by being granted a licence to operate a GSM network in Rwanda.

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NewNet Communication Technologies, a Skyview Capital portfolio company, announced today that it plans to acquire the former Motorola Solutions’ WiMAX business from Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN). Under the terms of the agreement, NewNet would acquire the complete WiMAX product portfolio, the related employees and assets, as well as active customer and supplier contracts. Approximately 300 NSN employees would transfer to NewNet. The companies expect to close before December 31, 2011.

As a part of the transaction the companies expect to transition approximately 300 globally deployed NSN employees to NewNet. Many of these employees are based in Chicago and Hangzhou, China.

Specific terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The number of mobile subscriptions in the Middle East will cross the 250-million mark during 2012, reaching 271.27 million at end-2012 and rising to 352 million at end-2016, according to forecasts by Informa Telecoms & Media.

Additionally, the average mobile penetration rate for the Middle East will cross the 100 per cent mark in 2012: It will rise from 97.72 per cent at end-2011 to 107.09 per cent at end-2012, exceeding the mobile penetration rate in North America (US/Canada) for the first time. (The mobile penetration rate in North America at end-2012 will be 102.77 per cent.

Iran will continue to be the biggest mobile market in the Middle East by subscriptions with 82.91 million subscriptions forecast for end-2011, rising to 122.13 million at end-2016.

Saudi Arabia has the next biggest mobile market in the region by subscriptions, with a 50.8 million active mobile subscriptions forecast for end-2011, rising to 71.32 million at end-2016.

Despite the take-up of smartphones and, to a lesser degree, mobile broadband in some parts of the Middle East, data services only account for a relatively small proportion of mobile revenues in the region overall. Data accounted for 13 per cent of mobile revenues in the Middle East in Q211; the lowest percentage for any major world region other than Africa.