Airtel Nigeria has abandoned a proposed bid for beleaguered operator 9mobile.

Idea Cellular, India’s third largest mobile operator and sixth-ranked in the world, is to upgrade its optical network with ECI.

U Mobile has extended its existing Business Support System (BSS) partnership with Ericsson to move towards fully converged billing.

Bango, the global mobile payments company, has partnered with MTN Ghana to launch operator payments in Google Play.

MTN and VANU have announced the integration of their two networks. The move extends MTN’s coverage to Rwandans who are currently unconnected in rural areas.

Arabsat, a leading satellite services provider in the Middle East, is partnering with CETel to offer customers business continuity services.

Vodacom Lesotho has replaced its legacy device management system with Sicap’s next generation device management solution.

Middle East-based mobile operator Ooredoo Group has selected CombaTelecom as its main supplier of antennas and associated products.

Indian market leader Bharti Airtel is using Huawei’s CloudAir to bolster its 4G coverage so that it can compete more effectively with Reliance Jio.

Nepal’s second largest operator Ncell has extended its 4G network to 21 cities in the country, meaning that it covers over 15% of the country’s population.

Axiata’s Bangladeshi unit Robi has agreed to a site sharing deal with state-owned Teletalk, one of the country’s smaller operators.

Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov has had $820m of his assets frozen in a payment dispute over his purchase of the country’s largest fixed-line provider Ukrtelecom.

CETel has signed a five-year contract with SES Networks to connect new exploration and production sites in Africa via SES Networks’ medium earth orbit (MEO) O3b satellite constellation.

Airtel has partnered with digital content subscription services and mobile payment aggregation provider RGK Mobile for direct billing services in India.

Thai market leader AIS and state-run provider TOT have agreed a deal that will allow the former to deliver commercial services using the latter’s 2.1GHz spectrum.

China has maintained its dominance in the global IoT market, with Chinese operators covering around 46% of cellular IoT connections in Q3 2017.

Liberty Global has split off its Latin American unit into a separate entity branded Liberty Latin America to provide it “access to the capital and resources necessary to achieve superior financial and strategic growth”.

Indian regulator TRAI has begun a public consultation over a four-year plan aimed at securing the country’s position as a “front runner of the fourth industrial revolution” by 2022.

Qatar’s Ooredoo has confirmed that it has held discussions over the possibility of acquiring a stake in Turkey’s Turk Telekom, but noted that no tangible progress has been made on the matter.

Huawei has won a $28.5 million contract to overhaul Filipino market leader PLDT’s online charging and electronic loading platforms for prepaid users.

Tencent has hit back against suggestions that it monitors user accounts by stating that it does not store user messages sent via its popular WeChat service.

After completing trials in Q3 2017, AT&T has now launched its LTE-M network in Mexico.

The current owners of Nigeria's 9mobile have been granted more time to find a buyer for the operator by the country’s regulator.