India’s Bharti Airtel has signed an agreement with chipmaker Qualcomm to acquire 49 per cent of its Indian BWA entities. Qualcomm acquired the wireless broadband service permits in India for four states in the country in 2010 for $1bn. The purchase was made in a deliberate bid to block the progress of WiMAX as an alternative 4G technology in the country, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said at the time. Now, it has sold the 49 per cent stake to Bharti for a mere $165m.

India’s Bharti Airtel has bought the mobile masts of Rwandan carrier Rwandatel for $15.5m, after the African firm went into liquidation in 2011.

Bharti Airtel has launched its operation in Rwanda, expanding its reach in Africa to 17 markets. The operator said that it took just 83 days to build the network from scratch, claiming the network represents the fastest Greenfield launch in history of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Indian operator has also pledged to invest $100m over the next three years.

Indian state-owned telco BSNL still has not restored all points of interconnections, despite a clear direction from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), according to reports in the country. Earlier this month, BSNL cut off connectivity to Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular numbers in several states, over a dispute regarding non-payment of fees for providing interconnection between fixed lines and mobiles. BSNL is claiming that it is owed $550,000 by the three operators.

Rwanda now has its third mobile operator after Bharti Airtel was awarded a licence to operate 2G and 3G services in the country. The company has pledged to invest a total of over $100 million in Rwanda over the next three years.

The war of words between Kenyan operators Bharti Airtel and Zain and the company enlisted to manage the market’s recently introduced mobile number portability (MNP) programme, Porting Access, has escalated to the legal domain. In a statement issued Tuesday, Safaricom’s director of corporate affairs, Nzioka Waita, said the firm is suing Porting Access, along with spokesman Patrick Musimba, for defamation.

The jewel in Mittal’s rather large corporate crown is Bharti Airtel, India’s leading mobile carrier. With more than 100 million customers it is the third largest single market player after Chinese carriers Mobile and Unicom.

With subscriber growth increasingly restricted to emerging markets with a huge collective population, the operators able to achieve success in these regions will find themselves among the most powerful in the world. And then they’ll want to go global.

There was another terse announcement from Apple on Monday morning, revealing the names of yet more operator partners which will be carrying the iPhone. Optus, SingTel, Bharti Airtel and Globe have all signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to Australia, Singapore, India and the Philippines respectively later this year. No further information [...]