South Korean telecom company SK Telecom (SKT) has issued US$500 million worth of five-year private loans at a coupon rate of 3.75 percent, the company said, in a bid to secure enough capital in time for an unstable world economy and brace for future interest rate hikes.
Vodafone India announced on April 3 the completion of the sale of its standalone tower unit in India to ATC Telecom Infrastructure Private Limited for an enterprise value of INR 38.5 billion (€478 million). Vodafone India is merging with Indian telecom company Idea Cellular, and both companies announced their intention to sell their individual tower businesses.
At the 4G/5G International Conference 2018 in Hanoi on April 6, Huawei outlined the path to a 5G Era for Vietnam. Speaking at the conference on “Paving the Way for 5G in Vietnam”, Dr. Mohamed Madkour, Vice President of Huawei Global Wireless Network Marketing, highlighted the value that 5G will bring to Vietnam in terms of enhancing people’s lives, improving businesses and driving economic growth.
Financial analysts are projecting that Indian telecommunications incumbent Bharti Airtel will post its first quarterly loss in 15 years for the three months to end-March. The quarterly loss is a by-product of an intense price war in the telecommunications sector in India which continues to erode its bottom line and shows no signs of abating.
Nokia announced that China Mobile ranked it number 1 in a central bid to supply equipment for its regional optical transport network, with deployment of the new network having already started.
Nokia's Nuage Networks has been chosen by China Mobile (Suzhou) Software Technical Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Mobile, as the SDN platform for China Mobile's public and private enterprise cloud services offering. The platform is based on the Nuage Networks VSP and includes cloud implementations on virtual machines, Kubernetes (K8S) containers and OpenStack Ironic-based bare metal servers.
Some of India’s most prominent telecommunication operators have been forced to launch investment initiatives in a bid to offset debts and losses as a result of the price war that has engulfed the industry in the country.
Telecommunications operator Vodafone New Zealand has announced that it has conducted pre-standard 5G trials in partnership with Nokia in an effort to demonstrate how it can evolve its networks from 4G to 5G.
Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) have backtracked on a decision to split the 1800-MHz spectrum that was planned to be reallocated in an auction into nine 10-MHz blocks. Instead, the regulator plans to auction the spectrum in three 30-MHz lots, according to the Bangkok Post.
Swedish telecom equipment vendor Ericsson plans to reduce costs by at least SEK 10 billion (around $1.2 billion) by mid-2018 to compensate sluggish profits. Ericsson revealed at its annual general meeting (AGM) that for the full year 2017 net sales decreased by 10 percent to SEK 201 billion, and operating income was down 38.1 percent.
