Telecom Operators

Vodafone Egypt has further renewed its partnership with Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) to transform the service provider’s Business Support System (BSS) into an industrialized, real-time converged environment. In addition, upgrades to the latest versions of Ericsson Charging and Ericsson Mediation will facilitate a seamless evolution towards 5G/IoT readiness by helping Vodafone Egypt meet customer demands with new offers, strengthen competitiveness, enable flexibility to meet market demands, and reduce costs through streamlined operations.

A public tender has now been announced to assign Angola’s fourth telecom operator license. In the first phase ending November 8, interested bidders will be given the opportunity to apply before moving to the next one in which bids will be submitted by qualified candidates selected by the Evaluation Committee. Afterwards, 60 days will be granted for qualified candidates to submit their technical and financial proposals.

MTN Group is pleased to announce the appointment of Djibril Ouattara to the position of MTN Ivory Coast CEO, effective 1 November 2019. The appointment follows the departure of former CEO, Freddy Tchala in September.

Network provider rain activated Africa’s first commercial 5G network by making it available to selected customers. Although currently limited to "selected customers" in two cities Johannesburg and Tshwane, the network will eventually be extended to the major metros in South Africa during 2020.

Ethiopia is pressing ahead with privatizing the world’s largest telecoms monopoly. Ethio Telecom is planning to give up 49% of its stake next year and has launched a search for an adviser on the sale.

PCCW Global, the international operating division of HKT, Hong Kong’s premier telecommunications service provider, Orange, the leading telecommunications operator in France and a major investor in over 40 submarine cables in the world, and PEACE Cable International, a leading international submarine cable operator, signed an agreement during the Submarine Networks World event in Singapore to deploy the Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) submarine cable system, with a 12,000km ultra-low latency high-speed cable system that will relieve critical congestion on one of the busiest data routes in the world.

Airtel Africa’s partnership with Mastercard will give 100 million Airtel Africa mobile phone users across 14 African countries access to Mastercard’s global network.

MTN and Ericsson have extended their Mobile Money partnership by launching an open API platform in Ghana to give entrepreneurs an opportunity to develop revenue-generating applications. MTN Mobile Money is the most widely used mobile money platform in Ghana. As part of the new agreement, MTN will grant access to third parties to its Mobile Money Access Programming Interface (API) powered by Ericsson Wallet Platform.

Telkom has officially launched new Mobile Data plans that will provide customers with data connectivity for internet access to emails, social media applications, streaming and internet browsing while they are on the move.

The National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) of Egypt and the mobile operators Orange Egypt, Vodafone Egypt and Etisalat Misr have signed a settlement agreement initialed respectively by Mustafa Abdel Wahed, NTRA Executive Chairman, Yasser Shaker, CEO of Orange Egypt, Alexander Froman, CEO of Vodafone Egypt and Hazem Metwally, CEO of Etisalat Misr. It represents the end of the legal battles between telecom operators on Interconnection rates that have lasted for the last decade.