Subscribers of MTN Ghana are threatening the telecom company with a law suit after the company failed to compensate them as ordered by regulatory authorities.

Ghana’s National Communications Authority (NCA) ordered MTN to compensate the subscribers affected by some network disruptions that have been happening lately.

This order was given three weeks ago, and since the issuance of the order the affected subscribers say the company has yet to compensate clients.

Maame Aku, a law student at the School of Law at University of Ghana, has said that if the telecoms service provider does not compensate affected subscribers as promised, he then plans to drag MTN Ghana to court again.

MTN, which has about 5 million subscribers in Ghana, has attributed the disruptions to extensive ongoing modernization and transformation activities in line with its network strategy of improving its services.

Reuben Opata, MTN’s senior manager for radio access network planning, has explained that during the process, the network interface link connection on the switch experienced irregular errors resulting in the links failing.

Consequently, voice and data service delivery were affected, making it difficult for subscribers to make and receive calls as well as data and SMS.

MTN said it “regrets” the inconvenience suffered by its subscribers during the network disruption.

The NCA has also previous fined MTN Ghana more than $ 5,000 (GH¢1 million) for inaccurately charging clients for incoming international calls.

Microsoft and Nokia Board of Directors have today proclaimed that they have decided to enter into a transaction that involves Microsoft purchasing substantially all of Nokia’s Devices & Services business, license Nokia’s patents, and license and use Nokia’s mapping services.

According to the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will pay EUR 3.79 billion for this purchase and EUR 1.65 billion to license Nokia’s patents, for a total transaction price of EUR 5.44 billion in cash.

Microsoft will draw upon its overseas cash resources to fund the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2014, subject to approval by Nokia’s shareholders, regulatory approvals and other closing conditions.

In relation to the partnership with Nokia which was announced in February 2011 and the increasing success of Nokia’s Lumia smartphones, Microsoft aims to increase the growth of its share and profit in mobile devices through faster innovation, increased synergies, and unified branding and marketing.

For Nokia, this transaction is expected to be significantly accretive to earnings, strengthen its financial position, and provide a solid basis for future investment in its continuing businesses.

“It’s a bold step into the future – a win-win for employees, shareholders and consumers of both companies. Bringing these great teams together will accelerate Microsoft’s share and profits in phones, and strengthen the overall opportunities for both Microsoft and our partners across our entire family of devices and services,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft chief executive officer. “In addition to their innovation and strength in phones at all price points, Nokia brings proven capability and talent in critical areas such as hardware design and engineering, supply chain and manufacturing management, and hardware sales, marketing and distribution.”

“After a thorough assessment of how to maximize shareholder value, including consideration of a variety of alternatives, we believe this transaction is the best path forward for Nokia and its shareholders. Additionally, the deal offers future opportunities for many Nokia employees as part of a company with the strategy, financial resources and determination to succeed in the mobile space,” said Risto Siilasmaa, Chairman of the Nokia Board of Directors.

In the agreement, about 32,000 people are expected to transfer to Microsoft, including 4,700 people in Finland and 18,300 employees directly involved in manufacturing, assembly and packaging of products worldwide. The operations as well are planned to be transferred to Microsoft generated an estimated EUR 14.9 billion.

Microsoft is also acquiring Nokia’s Smart Devices business unit, including the award winning Lumia brand and products. As part of the transaction, Nokia is assigning to Microsoft its long-term patent licensing agreement with Qualcomm, as well as other licensing agreements.

Nokia’s Mobile Phones business unit will also belong to Microsoft,including the Asha brand and will license the Nokia brand for use with current Nokia mobile phone products.

Nokia will, however continue to own and manage the Nokia brand. This element provides Microsoft with the opportunity to extend its service offerings to a far wider group around the world while allowing Nokia’s mobile phones to serve as an on-ramp to Windows Phone.

Nokia will also retain its patent portfolio and will grant Microsoft a 10-year license to its patents at the time of the closing. Microsoft will grant Nokia reciprocal rights to use Microsoft patents in its HERE services. In addition, Nokia will grant Microsoft an option to extend this mutual patent agreement in perpetuity.

Moreover,Microsoft will become a strategic licensee of the HERE platform, and will separately pay Nokia for a four-year license.

Microsoft will also immediately make available to Nokia EUR 1.5 billion of financing in the form of three EUR 500 million tranches of convertible notes that Microsoft would fund from overseas resources. If Nokia decides to draw down on this financing option, Nokia would pay back these notes to Microsoft from the proceeds of the deal upon closing. The financing is not conditional on the transaction closing.

Microsoft also announced that it has selected Finland as the home for a new data centre that will serve Microsoft consumers in Europe. The company said it would invest more than a quarter-billion dollars in capital and operation of the new data centre over the next few years, with the potential for further expansion over time.

Upon leadership, Nokia expects that Stephen Elop, Jo Harlow, Juha Putkiranta, Timo Toikkanen, and Chris Weber would transfer to Microsoft at the anticipated closing of the transaction.

A statistics released in the weekend last from Stockholm, Sweden states that within the second quarter of this year, mobile subscription in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and other African countries have reached 781 million; with Nigeria taking the lead.

The continent takes the third position after Asia Pacific and China, which presently have 1.28 billion and 1.17 billion mobile subscriptions respectively.

Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, India, Middle East, Latin America and North America added one million, six million, eight million, six million, and four million new subscribers respectively.

With about 105 million net additions of mobile subscription across the globe in the second quarter of this year, the global mobile subscription is anticipated to grow six percent from 2012 to 2018; reaching nine billion, higher than the population of the world, which is stands at seven billion.

The report, which puts global mobile subscriptions at 6.5 billion at the end of June, noted that world wide mobile penetration reached 91 percent.

According to Ericsson’s Head of Strategic Marketing and Intelligence, Patrick Cerwall, China alone presented 30 percent of net additions, adding 30 million subscriptions; Indonesia added nine million, India- eight million, Bangladesh- five million; Nigeria- four million of net additions.

The foursome of GSM operators including MTN Nigeria, Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat currently shares 117 million active lines; while the Code Division Multiple Operators including Visafone, Starcomms and Multilinks fight to retain the loyalty of 2.56 million subscribers. The Fixed Wired and Wireless operators share 382,678 lines.

Nigeria’s teledensity is presently at 85.3 percent. The GSM Association puts South Africa’s mobile penetration at 66 percent per subscriber.

According to the quarterly statistics report for the first quarter of the 2012/13 Financial Year released by Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), the countries mobile subscription was put at slightly above 30 million, stressing that about 77.2 percent of its population now have access to mobile communications

Cerwall noted that mobile subscriptions have grown around seven percent annually and two percent quarterly basis.

The Ericsson’s Head of Strategic Marketing and Intelligence, in the mobility report said this was due to the fact that many subscribers have several subscriptions, with reasons including users lowering their traffic cost by using optimized subscriptions for different types of calls; maximizing coverage and having different subscriptions for mobile PCs, tablets and for mobile phones.

  “Consequently, subscription penetration can easily reach above 100 per cent, which is the case in many countries today. It should be noted however, that in some developing regions, it’s common for several people to share one subscription, having for example a family or community shared phone”, Cerwall stated.

Implementing SIM registration in Uganda has proven to be a hard nut to crack as the Uganda Human Rights Network (HRN) and Legal Brains Trust has taken the government to task over the registration process and has continued to take the Uganda Communications Commission to court over the legalities of the process.

Uganda like many other African countries has applied a SIM registration policy to help in curbing the criminal activities done with SIM cards.

On Friday High court Judge Yasin Nyanzi ruled in favor of the Uganda Communications Commission, stating that the Uganda Human Rights Network and Legal Brains Trust failed to prove their case.

“… there are criminals and like-minded people who would not like to register their SIM cards irrespective of the circumstances,” the judge said during the proceedings. The HRH and Legal Brains Trust said that the UCC had no legal right to disconnect SIM cards that weren’t registered by the Saturday last, as over a million SIM cards still needed to be registered.

SIM card registration in Uganda, according The Observer, is part of a regional exercise. Under the umbrella body called the East Africa Communications Organization (EACO), the East Africa region set mid 2012 as the deadline to have all existing SIM cards registered.”

The UCC also added that they had already reached their goal of registering over 90 percent of the SIM cards in Uganda as of August 30, which reflects a 70 percent increase since March this year.

The Observer reported that UCC Executive Director Godfrey Mutabazi said he was not surprised by the outcome of the petition since UCC was acting within the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act of 2010.

Mutabazi stressed that no extensions on the deadline would be made, even though 8 percent of the estimated 17 million mobile phone subscribers in Uganda have not yet registered their SIM cards.

The leading Namibian Telecom company which was  acquired by Telecom Namibia, Leo, has introduced its new brand TN Mobile which is stepping into the market and is well equipped with a wide range of both pre-paid and post-paid products as well as data bundles.

The new Telecom company says that its aim  is to support Namibians as they tap into the full potential of high-speed mobile data services.

“TN Mobile intends to help drive the nation’s access to the internet via mobile devices, this will allow the nation to tap into opportunities in education, personal improvement and industry, made possible by better and affordable internet accessibility,” said TN Mobile.

The company promises to offer the market outstanding new options as well as high quality and value-for-money mobile products together with attractive offers.

 “The landscape will certainly be seeing more of the TN mobile logo and smiling subscribers in all towns across all 14 regions of Namibia. TN Mobile intends to shake things up and change the Namibian mobile market, for the better,” they continued.

MTN South Africa experienced a breakdown on Wednesday on it SouthAfrican Data Network and it has now been confirmed that the company fell victim to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyber-attack.

The breakdown also affected internet service providers Afrihost and Axxess, the former claiming the attack was launched on MTN’s DNS cluster.

“The servers basically couldn’t cope with the load, and it was difficult for us to bring them up again while the attack was still in progress,” said Afrihost.

A denial-of-service cyber-attack is an ordinary tactic used by cyber criminals to flood a particular website with packet requests (traffic), to the point where the servers cannot handle the load and collapse under the pressure.

“The MTN DNS servers would normally handle this type of attack without any problems, but at the time of the attack, some changes were made to the DNS servers and there was a bug in the system that made the situation far worse than it should have been. This bug has been fixed and this issue should not happen again,” Afrihost’s Greg Payne.

When the cyber attacker struck on 28 August, Afrihost announced on their Facebook profile that they are experiencing connectivity issues.

Afrihost partnered with MTN in January this year to deliver a premium ADSL service to their clients.

“Afrihost have partnered with MTN to offer a premium ADSL service to our clients. By joining the biggest telecoms network on the continent, we have ensured the future of our products, services and clients. Over the past 3 years, MTN has been investing approximately R4 Billion annually on infrastructure upgrades to make their Broadband Services the very best on offer,” they announced at the time.