Zain Bahrain subscribers are set to enjoy richer and more advanced telecom services under the region’s first Long Term Evolution contract. Nokia Siemens Networks will modernise Zain’s network and charging system...

From its base in Abuja, Nigeria, CellTrust of Africa has been set up by its US-based parent CellTrust to provide secure mobile applications to one of the world’s fastest-growing mobile markets...

The World Bank Group has endorsed a $215 million, ten-year Central African Backbone Program which aims to bring rapid affordable internet to the region...

VNL has announced the first commercial deployment of its award-winning zero-opex solar-powered GSM system. The system is designed to help mobile operators build sustainable – and profitable – networks in remote rural areas where ARPUs are less than $2 a month...

 BuddeComm’s annual report "Caribbean – telecoms, mobile and broadband" predicts that the major mobile operator in the region, Digicel, will continue to be dominant in the region but that LIME (Cable & Wireless rebranded) will step up its commercial presence...

 The ITU/IMPACT partnership against cybercrime took the opportunity of ITU Telecom World 2009 to showcase one of the world’s most advanced systems to combat global cyberattacks...

ITU and Nokia Siemens Networks have formed a partnership to provide expertise and equipment at no charge to expand rural and remote connectivity. The agreement, announced at ITU Telecom World 2009 in Geneva, is targeted at the almost three billion people living in rural areas with little or no current access to communications infrastructure. As a first step villages in island countries of the Pacific region will be connected...

A wireless service provider (who cannot at present be named) with 30 million subscribers in South-East Asia has signed an agreement with Synchronica to be supplied with the mobile and email synchronisation products Mobile Gateway and Mobile Backup...

Report Buyer has added a market report Indian Mobile Market Dynamics and Forecast: 2008-2013, which estimates growth in mobile subscriptions for Indian mobile to rise by  20% per year compound. Low-income users are likely to be major beneficiaries...

East African company Jamii Telecommunications is enabling global carriers to deliver services to and from East Africa with Veraz Networks’ softswitch solution. JTL now no longer has to rely on other local providers...

 Cambridge Broadband Networks has won the contract to supply Saudi Arabia’s Mobily with its VectaStar point-to-multipoint, microwave backhaul platform. The platform is expected to play a significant part in Mobily’s ambitious infrastructure plans...

Cisco's Broadband Barometer (22nd edition) shows that fixed broadband connections grew 10.4 % in the first semester of 2009, in comparison with the same period last year...

After years of under-performance, Laos is on the way to economic growth. The mobile sector is attracting investment for many reasons including supplying telecoms to successful hydro-electric and mining projects...

The GSMA is one step closer to achieving its goal of financial security for 20 million unbanked by 2012: four operators have received grants under the Mobile Money for the Unbanked scheme...

Redknee’s billing and customer care software solutions have been selected by Smart Telecom of Nepal, who will use Redknee’s turnkey converged billing to launch voice, messaging and data services to its prepaid and postpaid customers over both GSM and satellite networks...

Residents and businesses on St Lucia can sign up for a new fixed-line service from Karib Cable. The company has been active on St Lucia for around eighteen months and has broken a monopoly previously held by Cable and Wireless...

The deadline for bids for Nigerian telecoms incumbent, NITEL, has been pushed back from today to the end of October. Onda Analytics believes the complexity of the opportunity, resulting from the difficult situation NITEL has found itself in, is to blame for this delay...

At a time of unparalleled link-ups between East Africa and the rest of the world, SES is to offer its Astra2Connect satellite-based broadband platform for Internet connections to East and Central Africa...

Strolling through his local convenience store, editor Michael Schwartz saw the headline on the latest issue of the Economist: The power of mobile money. He is glad the Economist is summarising what Developing Telecoms has been saying for the last four years...

Trading conditions relating to fixed-line services provided by Bahamas Telecommunications Company make for very depressing reading: a drop of 80% over the four years to the end of 2008. Only increased rental charges have have reduced the losses sustained...

Iran has witnessed the privatisation of its state-monopoly Iranian Telecommunications Company. US$8 billion passed hands as a consortium dominated by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard makes its presence felt in the country’s telecoms sector...

Vietnam Mobile Telecom Services Company (VMS) has chosen the NEC Pasolink ultra-compact microwave communications system to support the growth of its mobile backhaul solutions...

Carriers worldwide are seeing increasing bandwidth demand on submarine networks and many of these latter are reaching the limits of their current capacity. The Infinera submarine solution is claimed to offer submarine network operators a way to protect their investment in their subsea infrastructure while adding new capacity to the network. This review looks at the new solution and puts it in its global context...

Following the recent highly negative report from Companies and Markets, iKS-Consulting, a specialist Central and Eastern European ICT research organisation has provided a much more up-beat assessment of the market in Ukraine. Revenue in telecoms grew over three and a half times from 2003 to 2008 and Internet access and satellite TV will deliver future growth...

Michael Schwartz looks at the graph of Internet usage in Key Indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2009, recently issued by the Asian Development Bank. Only 16 out of 47 countries surveyed have an Internet rate of 20% or more. The Digital Divide is still a major issue in this region...

Tariffs 72% cheaper, broadband adoption rising by 28% per annum compound, and only one African coastal state without cable access. These ambitious and inspiring predictions are made by Pyramid Research in its latest report Africa connects: undersea cables to drive an African broadband boom.

ZTE’s ZXR10 T8000 is claimed to be the first high-end router in China to use proprietary chip technology. In a frank statement of its ambition, ZTE has set itself a target of more than US$10 billion revenue in the next three years.