South Africa’s third mobile carrier, Cell C, has announced that it will begin rolling out its 42Mbps HSPA+ service in early April. Following through on plans that were announced in October 2010, the operator is adopting a phased rollout strategy, beginning with Port Elizabeth, where the high speed service will use ZTE modems.

Telstra has defended its decision to withdraw from Hong Kong’s spectrum auction. The firm said that “bids were destroying value” and that it had only participated in “an opportunistic way” because it already owns significant spectrum and would therefore “retain leadership no matter what the outcome of the auction could be.”

German mobile operator E-Plus is to undertake a trial of TD-LTE technology, supported by the world’s largest mobile operator, China Mobile. Chinese vendor ZTE will supply the infrastructure for the trial, which will use 2.6GHz spectrum acquired by E-Plus in spectrum auctions that concluded in May 2010.