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December
Etisalat will spend $1.2bn, raised in a loan, to expand its mobile network in Egypt
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VimpelCom’s plan to buy Naguib Sawiris’s telecoms business is unravelling because of opposition from 36% shareholder Telenor
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Bharti Airtel has announced a $400m investment plan in one of the networks it acquired this year from Zain
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MTN is selling its mobile phone towers in Ghana to a joint venture it is setting up with American Tower
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France Telecom is to manage Ethio Telecom, which has replaced ETC as Ethiopia’s monopoly operator
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Gulf operator Etisalat can come for 3G services in Nigeria with the acquisition of a local operator
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The satellite industry is responding to the worldwide demand for broadband access by funding new projects to expand services
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November
New base stations going up in emerging markets in the next two years will waste gigawatts of power that operators could sell cheaply to customers
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O3b, a satellite project to provide wholesale connection to the internet in remote areas, will go ahead after raising $1.2bn
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South African mobile group MTN has sold shares worth $393m to black staff and members of the public
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Orange is continuing its strategy to build in emerging markets with a plan to buy a stake in Iraqi operator
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Orange is able to compete for 3G services in Kenya with Safaricom and Airtel, the former Zain
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Qatar Telecom will take control of Tunisiana, helping to reduce Orascom’s debt ahead of a merger with VimpelCom
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Telkom of South Africa is to dispose of Multi-Links, its loss-making CDMA operation in Nigeria
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Bharti head Sunil Bharti Mittal announces unified Airtel brand for 19 operations in Africa and Asia, replacing Zain in Africa
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Transforming a 25 billion minute network to NGN in two nights
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Global Telecoms Business announces GTB 40 under 40 for Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific in addition to event for Europe and Americas
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Vietnamese operator Viettel is leading a consortium that has won the third mobile licence in Mozambique
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South African operator Cell C is to sell its existing 1,400 towers and 1,800 planned towers to American Tower
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Etisalat, controlled by the UAE government, appears set to take control of the remainder of Zain, though it will need to sell its shares in Zain Saudi Arabia
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LAP Green Network, owned by a Libya’s sovereign wealth fund, has bought control of Chad’s Sotel, its latest African investment
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October
Bharti Airtel may start to pay back early some of the money it borrowed to buy Zain's African interests
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Egypt's Mobinil is looking to borrow $347m for a network expansion plan
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South Africa’s MTN has sold $400m worth of shares in a project to widen ownership among black South Africans
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Morocco has dropped plans to sell part of its 30% holding in local fixed and mobile operator Maroc Telecom
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Telkom in South Africa has launched its mobile operation, Heita, in competition with MTN and former partner Vodacom
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A Nigerian consortium, apparently including participation from China Unicom, has been approved to buy Nigerian Telecommunications
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LAP Green Networks, the African investment company backed by Libya, is building a fibre optic network in Zambia
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NTT and Dimension Data have announced that NTT’s offer to acquire Dimension Data is now wholly unconditional
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Eaton Telecom Infrastructure, another project run by Sanjiv Ahuja of LightSquared, is to take over Vodafone Ghana’s mobile phone towers
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Orascom’s operations including Italy’s Wind are likely to transfer to the control of VimpelCom under a deal with Orascom’s owner Naguib Sawiris
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September
France Telecom is to contribute €31 million of the €56 million cost of the new Lion2 cable connecting Africa
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State-controlled Tunisie Telecom has been awarded a 3G licence by the government of Tunisia
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France Telecom is to buy 40% of Morocco’s Meditel, the first acquisition since Stéphane Richard took over as CEO
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IBM, IT provider to Bharti Airtel in India, has a new 10-year deal for the operator’s new African businesses
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Bharti Airtel is to separate out the tower operation of the former Zain Africa by selling them to a subsidiary
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Private equity group Permira has bought Asia Broadcast Satellite, in a venture with the existing management
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South Africa’s Musa Capital is to raise $125m for a Malawi mobile network, G-Mobile, owned by Beryl Telecoms
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Alcatel-Lucent has won the contract from South Africa’s eFive to install a submarine cable from Africa to South America
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The boom in laying submarine cables along the east and west of Africa has two years to run, with the next demand likely to emerge from Asian countries and regions that missed by the main links
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August
A new cable serving west Africa is to be extended from Portugal to the UK following a contract with Alcatel-Lucent
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Orascom and Wind in Europe, the Middle East and north Africa may merge with VimpelCom and Telenor’s operations in Russia and eastern Europe, say reports
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There’s an increasing pace of deals between operators, banks and mobile money specialists as the industry seeks to win a share of a fast-growing business
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July
Bharti Airtel, which has paid $10.7bn for Zain’s African operations, plans to bid for 22% of Zain Zambia not included in the deal
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Main One, the cable linking Europe to the west African states of Nigeria and Ghana, has signed up its first customers
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MTN’s CEO Phuthuma Nhleko says the company will sell stakes in the business to a black investment operation and to staff who suffered apartheid discrimination
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Japanese operator NTT has made an agreed bid worth £2.1bn for South African IT group Dimension Data
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South African mobile operator MTN has raised $464m in bond sales in order to repay existing debt
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Egyptian based Orascom Telecom has sold its internet service provider business to Mobinil, the mobile operator in which it has a minority stake
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MainOne links Ghana and Nigeria with western Europe
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MTN, Bharti Airtel and 20 others bid for third licence
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June
Main line to Ghana and Nigeria ready to enter service in July
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Zain Kenya, now owned by Bharti, has become the third Kenyan operator to win a 3G licence, following Safaricom and Telkom Kenya
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France Telecom’s majority owned operation in Kenya is to build its first 3G network, competing with Vodafone’s Safaricom
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Bharti Airtel has announced plans to spend $100m on upgrading the Ugandan network it acquired from Zain
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Etisalat is to invest $1.4bn in its Egyptian operation, Etisalat Misr, to compete with Mobinil and Vodafone
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Regulatory hurdles in Algeria mean MTN has dropped its bid to buy five operations from Orascom Telecom
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Orascom chief Naguib Sawiris is negotiating to sell its Algerian subsidiary to South Africa-based MTN for $7.8bn
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Telecom Egypt and Vodafone have ended talks about the Egyptian incumbent taking 100% ownership of Vodafone Egypt
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Rene Meza, head of Zain’s operation in Kenya, shortly to be acquired by Bharti Airtel, is launching 3G services next month
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May
World Cup sponsor MTN has a two-year deal with Motorola to improve its network performance
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Reports say Telecom Egypt has approached Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao about buying 100% control of Vodafone Egypt
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South African mobile operator Cell C has given Nokia Siemens Networks a contract to upgrade its network
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Three banks are lending $1.3bn to Etisalat’s Egyptian operation to fund network investment over the next three years
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Etisalat in Egypt has launched high-speed broadband services at 42 megabits a second using Huawei equipment
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A total of 19 companies, including France Telecom Orange, have taken the first stage leading to bidding for a third mobile licence in Mozambique
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France Telecom has launched Tunisia’s first 3G network in association with a local group, Investec
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April
Rwanda is planning to offer a fourth mobile licence, competing against Tigo and others, when market conditions permit
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The Main One cable, due to link Nigeria to Europe from June, has signed an agreement with Seacom to complete a fibre ring around Africa
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IT companies and network operators will be competing for contracts from Bharti Airtel to run its newly acquired African networks
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Consolidation continues in emerging markets as MTN plans to buy Orascom operations in four African countries
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Egypt’s telecoms minister Tarek Kamel has helped to broker a deal between France Telecom and Orascom to end their dispute over control of Mobinil
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Reports say that two companies have bid for licences to supply cable, voice and internet services in competition with Telecom Egypt
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Thierry Moungalla, Congo’s telecoms minister, has denounced Zain’s sale of its operations to Bharti as illegal
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France Telecom’s new CEO Stéphane Richard says that the company plans to spend €7 billion on acquisitions in Africa and the Middle East
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Mozambique’s minister for telecoms, Paulo Zucula, says it wants tenders for a third mobile network by early July
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The Libyan government is planning to sell 5% and then 40% stakes in two mobile operators, Libyana and Al-Madar
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Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph is asking Kenya’s regulator for approval to start testing 4G services
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March
A deal to sell Zain’s African operations, except for Sudan and Morocco, should be signed in the next few days, says Zain
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Wang Jianzhou, chairman and CEO of the world’s biggest operator, says the company is ready to invest in businesses in Asia and Africa
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NTRA, the Egyptian regulator, is enforcing a ban on Skype and other IP calls over mobile internet connections
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CEO Srinath Narasimhan is re-investing the cash from that wholesale voice in wireless networks and value-added services in India and other emerging markets
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The National Council on Privatisation in Nigeria is looking again at plans to sell Nigerian Telecommunications
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Egypt’s National Telecom Regulatory Authority has delayed the deadline for applications for two new licences until April 15
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Indian operator Bharti Airtel is negotiating a loan so that it can buy most of Zain’s African businesses
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Phuthuma Nhleko is to step down from the top position in MTN after failing to secure a merger with Bharti Airtel
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February
Standard Chartered, Barclays and a number of other banks are discussing loans to Bharti to buy Zain’s African business
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The biggest shareholder in Egypt-based Orascom is to lend the company $225 million free of interest
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China Unicom has made China;s biggest ever bid for international telecoms expansion with a $2.5 billion offer for Nigeria’s Nitel
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India's Bharti Airtel is buying Zain's African operations for $10.7 billion, more than three times what Zain paid for the company in 2005
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A former Kuwait politician, Nabil Bin Salama, has taken over from Saad al Barrak at the top of Zain
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MTN of South Africa and local operator Globacom are shortlisted for a 75% stake in the Nigerian state-owned incumbent
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Saad Al Barrak has resigned from his position as deputy chairman and group CEO of Zain, though he will continue to be CEO of the Saudi Arabian operation
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Essar, the company that owns 33% of Vodafone’s Indian operation, is planning to invest $2 billion in up to seven African mobile businesses
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January
South Africa’s mobile operator Cell C has given ZTE a $378 million equipment and managed services deal
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Millicom’s Tigo mobile business in Ghana is to sell 750 of its towers to a specialist infrastructure company, Helios Towers
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Orascom’s lenders have granted the company a waiver of a credit agreement in relation to a $600 million tax claim from the Algerian government
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As the world enters a period of economic instability there is a pressing need for mobile network operators to identify new horizons of growth
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Zain has launched its mobile banking service, Zap, in Niger, Sierra Leone and Malawi, adding to Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda
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Egypt’s Mobinil plans to raise $273 million with the issue of bonds to expand its network
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Russian investment group Altimo was five minutes late to bid for Zambia’s Zamtel but has been confirmed as a bidder