During Mobile World Congress 2014 Huawei signed a number of agreements with Middle East operators.

These included signing a new series of agreements that will see Etisalat Group and Huawei deepen their cooperation in 5G mobile broadband services, fibre broadband services, and delivering Huawei’s latest range of consumer devices to more customers across the MENA region. A specific memorandum was also signed with Etisalat UAE to cooperate in mobile network modernisation in the Northern Emirates and Dubai over the course of 2014. Etisalat Nigeria further unveiled plans for an outsourcing partnership with Huawei covering aspects of the company’s IT infrastructure—the first IT outsourcing programme to be announced between the two companies in Africa.

Saudi Arabia’s STC has also announced the launch of an advanced 4G LTE-Advanced network in Saudi Arabia, supported by Huawei, with unprecedented download speeds making it the fastest commercial 4G network in the Middle East.

In Kuwait, Huawei and Viva announced plans to launch the first Joint Innovation Centre in Kuwait dedicated to enhancing the user experience of Viva’s mobile customers throughout the region.

Huawei also launched at MWC 2014 the world’s smallest carrier-grade router—the Atom Router—which simplifies the operation and maintenance of telecom IP networks and provides operators greater visibility of network performance.

Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) and Mobily have entered a MoU that will facilitate an additional long-term export credit of US$280 million with Finnvera, Finnish Export Credit (FEC), and lenders Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale. This credit will help Mobily purchase advanced solutions and services from NSN.

The Finnish export credit agency Finnvera and its subsidiary Finnish Export Credit (FEC) have issued their guarantee and financing offers. Mobily has mandated Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale to structure and arrange for Shariah compliant financing.

Vodacom has chosen Axiros for device management across its business customer base. The cellco provides voice, messaging, data and converged solutions to approximately 50 million active customers in South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has agreed to move from its existing device management solution to the Axiros platform.

Under the terms of the agreement, all existing business customers will be transferred to Axiros, the technology leader in advanced service and device management.

Specifically, Vodacom will leverage Axiros’ flagship product, Axess.ACS, to monitor, provision and manage deployed Internet services including VoIP and high-speed connectivity. In particular, both Access Gateway and IP phone CPEs will be remotely controlled and configured by Axess.ACS.

The Axess.ACS platform is the leading subscriber device management system – deployed in more than 35 per cent of Europe´s top 50 operators and carriers.

The UAE’s telecom regulator says that 61 000 mobile number porting requests have been received since the mobile number portability (MNP) service launched last December However only 23,000 of the requests have been completed.

There have also been complaints that the process has not worked smoothly for a lot of customers, although it seems many requests were made without the correct paperwork and had to be resubmitted.

"The significant number of porting requests received reflects the real interest of UAE consumers in the MNP service. The TRA is responsible for monitoring the service mechanisms, ensuring all the necessary documents and information is submitted to complete the transition and ultimately, ensuring the switchover process runs as smoothly as possible," said Mohamed Al Ghanim, director-general of the TRA.

Nokia is looking at a deal to buy US vendor Juniper Networks and merge it with NSN, according to German publication Manager Magazin Online.

Speculation is rife in the infrastructure market about the next stage of consolidation. NSN was linked to a deal at the end of last year with the recovering Alcatel-Lucent.

Talk has circulated particularly around NSN as it moves to the heart of the new Nokia, following the imminent sale of the group’s handset business to Microsoft.

And Nokia will have net cash of €7 billion (US$9.75 billion) to €8 billion on its balance sheet, following the Microsoft deal.

Manager Magazin Online said NSN’s CEO, Rajeev Suri, travelled to the US for talks with Juniper at the end of last year.

On the agenda was closer cooperation and a possible merger. Such a move would strengthen NSN in the US where historically it has been weak.

Juniper would cost US$13.7 billion, making it big for NSN to swallow –although the deal could be eased somewhat by Juniper’s US$3.1 billion cash reserves.

However, a deal is not thought to be imminent.