China Crescent rolls out WiMax in Africa

Software development company, China Crescent has selected Huawei for its first planned WiMax project in Africa, states TMCnet.

China Crescent aims to expand its global footprint and has chosen Kenya as its next target.

The first phase of China Crescent's WiMax project in Africa is expected to be online in the first quarter of 2010.

Kuwait's largest telecoms company, Zain, whose shareholders voted to lift a cap restricting ownership last week, is in talks to sell a stake in its African operations, its chief executive said, reports Reuters.

Zain is in talks with a number of partners concerning its African assets and "all scenarios are possible", Saad al-Barrak said after an extraordinary shareholder meeting.

"There is a demand (for) African assets beyond what we expected. There are a number of partners interested and we are still in preliminary talks," he told reporters.

Zimbabwe becomes the fourth country after SA, Kenya and Nigeria in sub-Saharan Africa to offer a fully functional 3G service following the roll-out of the technology by Econet Wireless, last week, says The Herald.

Although it will initially be offered to a limited market, it is expected that 3G services will eventually be expanded with the arrival of new bandwidth.

Econet Wireless chief executive, Douglas Mboweni, says: "The introduction of 3G and related technologies such as GPRS will accelerate economic growth in keeping with the country's turnaround strategy.”