Idea selects Ericsson for 4G rollout
India’s third largest operator Idea Cellular selected Ericsson to deploy an LTE network and transform its 2G and 3G networks in regions with an estimated 40 million subscribers.

The two-year contract with India, which has more 170 million mobile connections, covers equipment, software and a range of professional services, including project management, systems integration and supervisory managed services for LTE.

Ericsson will install its multi-standard RBS 6000 radio base stations, which support GSM/EDGE, W-CDMA/HSPA and LTE in a single cabinet as well as upgrade core network and operations support systems (OSS).

The agreement also includes transforming the operator’s existing radio access and core network infrastructure across nine regions for 2G and five service areas for 3G.

Globe steps up anti-spam campaign
Globe Telecom, the second largest operator in the Philippines, stepped up efforts to block spam and scam messages by partnering with US-based Xura, a specialist in addressing network vulnerabilities.

The operator’s use of Xura’s fully automated mechanism, which employs complex anti-spam algorithms, has increased the average number of blocked messages from 17,000 per day in Q4 to 300,000 in early February.

Globe spent an estimated $4 million on the automated system, which now covers the majority of its postpaid and prepaid customers, totaling 53 million at the end of 2015.

Last year Globe said it blocked nearly 37 million spam and scam text messages. In addition to filtering scam messages, the operator also has disconnected more than 30,000 prepaid numbers found to be a consistent source of spam and scam text messages.

Singtel boosts 4G speeds with nationwide 900MHz
Singapore’s largest operator Singtel is on track to provide nationwide 4G coverage on the 900MHz band by end March, which will enable it to offer three-band carrier aggregation (CA) across the city state.

The deployment, delivered by Ericsson, leverages the low-band LTE frequency to improve speeds on its LTE-Advanced network, which it first introduced in August 2014 (2-band CA) and achieved nationwide coverage last March.

Tay Yeow Lian, Singtel’s MD for networks, said the tri-band technology, using the 900MHz, 1.8GHz and 2.6GHz bands, allows it to provide one of the fastest peak mobile throughputs in Singapore with download speeds of more than 300Mb/s.