Mobile subscriber numbers in Zimbabwe trebled from early 2009 to mid-2010, whereas fixed line subscriptions remained stagnant. With demand for voice services increasingly met, future growth is predicted to occur around mobile Internet and broadband provision...

Egypt’s Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation has entered into a new Cooperation Protocol with Vodafone Egypt to provide agricultural guidance services via mobile. The initiative will also launch a call centre for Egyptian farmers...

The Indian telecom market has seen an average growth rate of 30% for the past many years, and today the number of mobile phone subscribers in the country stands at almost 600 million. This means that nearly half of the country’s population subscribes to cellular services...

A mobile number portability trial in China has seen disappointing results, with just 50,000 subscribers switching successfully between operators during the six-month pilot scheme...

A new centre dedicated to renewable energy is to be built in South Africa by Vodacom, a subsidiary of Vodafone...

Since its launch in April 2008, handset provider Mi-Fone has been catering to mass market sectors in emerging markets, providing affordable handsets with in-demand functionality – and all the while making sure to invest back into the markets that have made it profitable. Developing Telecoms editor James Barton recently had the opportunity to catch up with Alpesh Patel, founder and CEO of Mi-Fone...

Indonesia’s market leading operator has begun the next phase of its transformation programme supporting its Next Generation Network (NGN) Initiative...

A new TD-LTE service provider could be entering the Indian market before the end of the year...

A new tuneable MIMO antenna designed for multimode, multiband handsets in LTE deployments has been unveiled by the China Mobile Research Institute in partnership with SkyCross...

One of Croatia’s leading operators is upgrading its customer care processes with a new solution that provides its service agents with the information required to resolve customer issues instantly...

Tower-free mobile network coverage is now being provided across Male, the capital city of the Maldives...

New reports have arisen suggesting that the Polish operator Polkomtel is likely to be acquired by a fellow Pole, the billionaire Zygmunt Solorz-Zak, who is thought to be the nation’s second most wealthy man...

Customers are the focus of MTS Russia’s latest deployment, with the operator introducing new solutions to improve the quality of customer- and resource-facing services across its network domains...

Latin America outperformed other regions in mobile revenue growth for the period 1Q 2010 to 1Q 2011...

With more than 42 million refugees in the world, many affected by political conflict and natural disasters, the added desperation of being separated from their family and friends without feasible means of tracing them can only compound their suffering...

The sale of the Nigerian firm Multi-Links has been scrapped by the former’s owner, the South African operator Telkom, due to an ongoing legal challenge from the infrastructure provider Helios Towers...

A new range of devices launching in India is aiming to provide smartphone-like capabilities for a far lower price than traditional smartphones. The OGO devices are now being offered by Bright Telecom’s Wynncom arm...

A leading VAS provider is ready to begin hiring for its African branch – and is reportedly aiming to provide jobs for at around 200 people...

The Indian telecom industry has undergone a revolutionary change during the past few years to become one of the leading telecom markets on the global map...

The mobile financial services specialist Fundamo has been acquired by Visa for around $110 million, indicating that the global payments giant is looking to strengthen its operations in emerging markets by capitalising on Fundamo’s experience in this area...

With smartphones increasingly prevalent in developed markets, demand for the services they offer is rising in emerging markets too – but pricing can be prohibitively expensive. Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of messaging software firm Synchronica, believes it’s not specific devices that are coveted, but their functionality – and this is why feature phones are on the rise in emerging markets. Developing Telecoms editor James Barton caught up with Carsten Brinkschulte to discuss this trend...

With demand for internet access constantly rising in India, the ISP market is witnessing tremendous growth in subscriber numbers, and as a result the demand for the network equipment and consumer premise equipments bought by ISPs is growing...

New MVNO services will launch throughout Latin America via a partnership between MVNO specialist Tribe Mobile and Virgin Group, which operates a mobile virtual network in the UK...

Spanning 20 provinces, Afghanistan’s largest VSAT deployment has been implemented by the Central Asia Development Group (CADG) in partnership with broad-spectrum tech firm Insyndia...

A leading Afghan operator is improving its quality of service by implementing a new tool for multi-vendor network performance management...

Mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) across Asia will soon be able to provide their customers with self-care connectivity settings to surf the web, as well as substantially reducing the number of calls patched through to call centres...

South Africa’s Deputy Communications Minister Obed Bapela has called for the widespread adoption of mobile health services across the country...

One of St. Petersburg’s leading Internet Service Providers has upgraded its network infrastructure and dramatically increased bandwidth by deploying a new multiprotocol label switching (MPLS)-enabled architecture...

The lack of consensus between telecoms and financial institutions, in terms of an equitable split of mobile payments revenues, decelerated the expansion of the mobile payments market in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)...

A Chinese operator is launching broadband wireless access services across ten Chinese markets in nine provinces, including Beijing...

The founder and CEO of the Indian telecom giant Bharti Group, Sunil Mittal, has announced that the firm will provide a cash injection of US$1 billion this year for its upcoming mobile operations in Africa...

The prolific Latin American operator America Movil’s shares hit their lowest point for a year last week, apparently in reaction to comments from Mexico’s regulators suggesting that legislation aimed at increasing the operator’s competition could be implemented this month...

A major power crisis could be underway in Nigeria, as the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) is generating insufficient power despite the country’s increasingly dependency on diesel generated power as its primary source of energy...