Vodafone Egypt’s newly appointed CEO has laid out an ambitious investment strategy for its network, according to Reuters.

Ahmed Essam said the operator will invest approximately EGP9.5 billion (US$1.3 billion) over the next three years on its infrastructure.

The operator will pay for the plan through existing funds, said the CEO, who took up his position this month.

Vodafone is the country’s largest mobile operator with 43 million mobile connections, ahead of rivals Mobinil and Etisalat.

Vodafone Egypt is 45 per cent owned by fixed incumbent Telecom Egypt, which earlier this year was given a green light to acquire a unified licence for EGP2.5 billion.

The licence allows the incumbent to offer mobile services using other operator networks.

In return, the country’s mobile operators have the option to pay EGP100 million to make use of Telecom Egypt’s fixed network.

Vodafone Egypt has not decided whether or not to take up this opportunity, said Essam.

The fixed incumbent has been given a one-year deadline to sell its stake in Vodafone Egypt once the unified licence is activated.

Huawei reported H114 revenues were up 19 per cent year-on-year, to CNY135.8 billion (US$21.9 billion), helped by increased LTE investment worldwide and growing brand awareness for its range of consumer devices.

Huawei stated it also expected to post an operating margin of 18.3 per cent for the first six months.

The Chinese firm did not give a comparable figure for 2013, but operating margin for the whole of last year was 12.2 per cent.

Huawei’s flagship smartphone, the Ascend P7, is now being sold in more than 70 countries and regions. And though Ascend P7 was only launched in May, Huawei claimed recently it had already shipped more than one million of them.

IDC estimated Huawei shipped 13.7 million smartphones in the first three months of this year, making it the world’s third-biggest smartphone vendor.

Ericsson reported stable revenue but a healthy increase in profit as higher-margin mobile broadband capacity projects had a positive impact, along with growth in the Middle East, China and India.

The company reported sales of SEK54.8 billion (US$8.04 billion), down one per cent year-on-year but up 15 per cent on the previous quarter. Net profit was SEK2.58 billion, up 76 per cent from the same quarter in 2013 (and up 57 per cent quarter-on-quarter).

Capacity projects in advanced LTE markets have been particularly beneficial to the company’s financial performance.

Ericsson’s gross margin was 36.4 per cent in the second quarter, compared with 32.4 per cent a year earlier. Lower restructuring charges and increased patent income also played a part in this.

Ericsson president and CEO Hans Vestberg said the investment climate in India is improving, following spectrum auctions held in May. Revenue from India during the second quarter was SEK1.6 billion, up 29 per cent year-on-year.

The Middle East also saw healthy growth, generating SEK4.5 billion in sales, a 13 per cent year-on-year increase.

Ooredoo Kuwait announced today the appointment of Hani ElKukhun, as chief operating officer. With almost 20 years of experience, ElKukhun has a wealth of international telecommunications experience having worked for companies including Zain, Telus Canada, Cisco and Xerox. ElKukhun was director of sales at Telus Canada, GM Officer Solutions at Xerox, GM Kuwait and Bahrain at Cisco for seven years, and spent the last two years as COO at Zain Kuwait.

ElKukhun replaces Peter Kaliaropoulos, who was appointed to the position in December 2013 from Batelco, but had to leave Ooredoo for personal reasons.

Google has reported surging revenues that beat analysts’ forecasts, and a profit that was up by a quarter, but missing forecasts.

The company said that its second-quarter revenues rose by 22 per cent to US$16 billion, excluding the Motorola Mobility division, while profits were up by 26 per cent to US$3.5 billion.

Excluding the soon to be sold Motorola Mobility division, the company indicated that costs are also rising faster, as Google invested heavily in new data centres and hired an additional 2,414 staff in the three month period, taking its total workforce to 48,584 employees.

One significant change in headcount was the announcement that its chief business officer, Nikesh Arora is leaving the company to join Japan’s Softbank.

In Google’s own mobile operations, growth of so-called "other revenue" jumped by 53 per cent, led by increased mobile app sales, where Google creams off a percentage of the sales of third-party apps.

In terms of its own websites, the company said that the volume of clicks on adverts served up when people carry out a search rose by a third on its own websites, although the value of each click has continued to fall.

The contrary report is due to the increased use of mobile devices, where advertising revenues are a fraction of the value of their desktop counterparts.

This marked the 11th consecutive quarter of decline in the average cost per click, although the decline is slowing thanks to the rise of tablet use.