India’s Essar Group has been forced to cancel the purchase of mobile networks in Uganda and Congo after the company was unable to secure regulatory approval for the transaction.

Essar Group agreed to purchase the networks from Warid Telecom in November 2009 for US$318 million, but the two companies have now cancelled the deal as, “certain condition precedents pertaining to government clearance were not met”.

This development comes on the back of Essar’s sale of its 33 per cent stake in Vodafone Essar, the holding company that owned 75 per cent of the Indian mobile network.

It is also reported that Essar is looking to sell its Kenyan subsidiary and withdraw from the mobile network operator business entirely.

Nokia announced that it has signed a patent licence agreement with Apple. The agreement will result in settlement of all patent litigation between the companies, including the withdrawal by Nokia and Apple of their respective complaints to the US International Trade Commission.

The financial structure of the agreement consists of a one-time payment payable by Apple and on-going royalties to be paid by Apple to Nokia for the term of the agreement. The specific terms of the contract are confidential.

“We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees,” said Stephen Elop, president and chief executive officer of Nokia. “This settlement demonstrates Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market.”

This agreement is expected to have a positive financial impact on Nokia’s recently revised outlook for the second quarter 2011 of around break-even non-IFRS operating margin for Devices & Services.

Nokia has announced full Arabic support for its Ovi Store across all existing platforms. Consumers whose devices are set to Arabic user interface will automatically view the Ovi Store in Arabic when entering.

“Arabic is the third most spoken language in the world with more than 300 million native speakers,” said Tom Farrell, GM, Nokia Lower Gulf. “We are very excited to now offer these consumers access to Nokia’s Ovi Store on a broad range of Nokia smartphones and mobile devices in their mother tongue.”

The majority of Arabic speaking consumers are located in the Middle East and Africa region where Nokia has seen significant growth in Ovi Store downloads. Primarily Arabic speaking countries account for almost 75 per cent of the overall MEA downloads, with Saudi ranking amongst the world’s top 10 download countries and UAE and Egypt in the top 25 globally.

There are also three local developers from MEA whose applications have each surpassed the one million download mark. One of these is a Java-based application “FunSMS” created by Edumid in Pakistan. Another local success story is AsgaTech from Egypt, which has published a number of apps on Ovi Store, resulting in a cumulative two million downloads to date.

In addition to Arabic support, the latest version of Ovi Store brings enhanced consumer features such as application updates, popularity calculations and web apps for Series 40 devices.

In April Nokia and Etisalat announced that through their ongoing collaboration, consumers across the Middle East were set to be able to purchase content from the Ovi Store with billing directly to their mobile phone account.

Ericsson today announced that it has reached an agreement with Providence Equity Partners, LLC and Warburg Pincus to acquire 100 percent of the shares of Telcordia, a global leader in the development of mobile, broadband and enterprise communications software and services, for US$1.15 billion. Closing is anticipated in Q411 with full effect Q112.

“The importance of operations and business support systems will continue to grow as more and more devices are connected, services become mobile and new business models for mobile broadband are introduced,” commented Hans Vestberg, president and CEO of Ericsson. “In this context, Telcordia brings very skilled people and knowledge, a large business in North America and other markets, as well as a good multi vendor product portfolio.”

The OSS/BSS is a growing market driven by the demand for business efficiency, innovation and high quality user experience. In 2010, the market for software and systems integration is valued at about US$35 billion and is expected to show a compound annual growth rate between 6-8 per cent between 2010 and 2013. In addition, there is an attractive market for outsourced and hosted managed services, growing in the same range.

Telcordia, which is headquartered in Piscataway, New Jersey, generated revenues of US$739 million during the last fiscal year ended January 31, 2011 and employs more than 2,600 people.

The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals and is expected to be accretive to Ericsson earnings per share within 12 months after closing.

Omantel has become the first Arab network operator to join the Global TD-LTE Initiative (GTI). The prime objective behind the formation of GTI is to harmonise LTE technologies.

The GTI was founded by China Mobile, Vodafone, Clearwire, Bharti Airtel, Softbank Mobile, Aero2 and E-Plus and was announced at the GSMA conference in Barcelona in February.

“Omantel conducted the first trial of TD-LTE technology during Salalah Tourism Festival 2010 and the second trial during the latest ICT exhibition (Comex 2011). The results were very encouraging with speeds reaching more than 100 Mbps,” commented Lars Gustafsson, VP of business development at Omantel.