China Tower to take control of 1M towers
China Tower, a joint venture set up last July, will soon take control of almost one million towers owned by China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.

A Barclays analyst said the three operators will hand over the tower assets by 15 August, which will allow them to book a one-time gain of about CNY148 billion ($24 billion), the South China Morning Post said.

M1 introduces VoLTE
Singapore’s M1 has launched VoLTE for its customers on 4G plans at no additional cost.

After a trial, the country’s third largest player has rolled out VoLTE on its LTE-Advanced network, which has theoretical peak download speeds of up to 300Mb/s. VoLTE technology enables calls to be connected faster and offers higher quality voice.

M1 COO Patrick Scodeller said customers may need to update their phone software to enable the feature, and M1 is working with handset vendors to ensure upcoming handsets come with the feature enabled.

Viettel partners with Opera to offer free internet
Vietnam’s Viettel is working with Opera up to give first-time data subscribers access to one million days of free internet.

During the campaign that runs until 25 May, each new subscriber to a data plan gets seven days of free browsing with Opera Mini, while existing subscribers can use the data package for only VND2,000 ($0.09) per day.

More than 500,000 people registered for the offer in one week during the soft launch, the companies said.

Globe works with RCBC to widen reach of mobile money services
G-Xchange, a subsidiary of Globe Telecom, is partnering with Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) to provide mobile money services to GCash and RCBC account holders, allowing for secure and hassle-free fund transfers via mobile phones.

Under the partnership, GCash will provide mobile accessibility to RCBC MyWallet customers, which caters to the unbanked Filipino market. RCBC customers will be able to transfer funds to their GCash accounts through mobile phones, as well as sending and receiving funds from another GCash account holder.

An RCBC representative said that putting mobility first for financial transactions is one of the biggest steps a monetary system can make for financial inclusion.