Nigeria’s telecom regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has extended the sales ban it imposed on three of the country’s mobile networks for missing quality of service requirements.

Without elaborating on the details, the NCC said that it would extend the sales ban on Airtel, MTN, and Globacom for an unspecified timeframe.

The sales ban was originally imposed in February, and had been expected to expire a few weeks ago, but the regulator had not commented on the issue, even as the ban remained in place.

It has now confirmed that the ban will remain in place, but is remaining equally opaque about how long for.

The mobile networks are reportedly still selling SIM cards in some parts of the country though, and the regulator said it is investigating the allegations.

Etisalat has issued an offer to buy out the remaining minority shareholders in Maroc Telecom.

In a filing to the local stock market, the company confirmed that it is submitting the tender based on the stock market rules that require anyone owning more than 40 per cent of the shares to make such a bid.

The shareholders are not required to sell though – so Etisalat could end up with a negligible increase in its 53 per cent stake.

Just 17 per cent of the company is listed on the local stock market, with the government owning the remaining 30 per cent. The government is not expected to sell its stake.

Although Etisalat is required to put in a bid for the 17 per cent, it is likely that the government will seek to prevent a total buy out as it would reduce liquidity on the stock market.

Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) has announced deploying North Africa’s first commercial LTE network in Algeria for the state-owned operator, Algérie Télécom.

Under the contract, NSN provided its Single RAN Advanced solution based on its high-capacity, scalable Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station for the majority of the LTE network. In addition, it deployed its cloud-ready NetAct for efficient network management across technologies. The company’s comprehensive services including network planning and optimisation, network implementation, and care services such as hardware and software services ensured the speedy and smooth rollout. In addition, NSN provided a security solution, which included a solution from Juniper Networks, in order to protect both the operator’s network assets and end users’ privacy.

NSN counts 141 LTE and TD-LTE network references worldwide.

The Somalian mobile network operator, Somtel has awarded a contract to Alcatel-Lucent for the deployment of a LTE network.

The contact is understood to involve 70 locations that have been identified for the upgrade.

Somalia currently has an estimated 1.5 million mobile subscribers, while Somtel has 33 per cent market share in the country. Somtel is part of the Dahabshiil Group.

Vodafone has reported record profits for the past year ended March 31 despite a further decline in revenues, thanks to the disposal of its 45 per cent stake in Verizon Wireless.

The company saw revenues for the year fall by 1.9 per cent to GBP43.6 billion (US$73.6 billion), while profits rocketed to GBP59.4 billion, thanks largely to a pre-tax gain of GBP45 billion from the Verizon Wireless sale, and the recognition of deferred tax assets of GBP19.3 billion.

The group’s emerging markets businesses have delivered strong organic growth this year. In particular, data usage in emerging markets is really taking off, providing further growth potential for the group. This has however been offset by significant on-going pressures in the European operations, from a combination of a weak macroeconomic environment, regulatory headwinds, and stiff competition.

As a consequence, the company wrote down the value of its subsidiaries in Germany, Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic and Romania by GBP6.6 billion as those markets continued to struggle.

As a result, the underlying EBITDA fell by 5.4 per cent to GBP12.8 billion. The underlying adjusted profit also fell, by 9.4 per cent to GBP7.9 billion.

Vodafone also expects EBITDA to fall this year, ending in the range of GBP11.4 billion to GBP11.9 billion, principally reflecting the impact of network investment and foreign exchange movements.