In a regular series, Mobile World Live‘s Asia Editor Joseph Waring provides a regional roundup of news snippets:

Airtel selects Nokia for dual-carrier 3G
Bharti Airtel has contracted Nokia Networks to implement India’s first dual-band, dual-carrier 3G network in Mumbai. The operator plans to refarm 900MHz spectrum to complement Mumbai’s existing 3G network on 2.1GHz, which will enable higher throughput.

The deal also includes the expansion of its 3G network in West Bengal and Bihar.

Under the contract, Nokia will supply its Single RAN Advanced platform, based on its energy-efficient Flexi Multiradio 10 base station. Nokia said the multi-standard radio platform is ideal for Airtel because it will also support its TD-LTE rollout and pave the way to FDD-LTE in the future.

Nokia will also deploy its Flexi Lite base station, a small all-in-one base station it said is optimised for indoor and outdoor micro-cell deployments for coverage in densely populated areas.

Telkomsel users offered 3 hours of free internet a day
Opera Software has teamed up with Indonesian online classified ads site Berniaga.com and Telkomsel to offer the operators’ customers three million hours of free mobile internet access over the next two months.

Telkomsel subscribers can use the mobile internet on their phone for three hours per day, using Opera’s browser-based Web Pass service sponsored by Berniaga.com. Through the partnership, Berniaga.com and Opera Software aim to introduce new consumers to the mobile internet in Indonesia.

“Indonesia is the fastest-growing C2C marketplace and classifieds market in Southeast Asia, and this growth is propelled by smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices,” said Reynazran Royono, deputy general manager of Berniaga.com. “With Sponsored Web Pass, we believe we can reach new consumers by making it easy and convenient for them to access the mobile internet.”

Opera Web Pass is available via the Opera Mini browser app that shrinks web pages by up to 90 per cent.

Telkom aims to double remittances
Telkom Indonesia plans to launch its remittance business in Japan after it finalises an agreement with Tokyo-based remittance company Kyodai Remittance later this month.

It is targeting the 40,000 Indonesian workers living in Japan.

Telkom next year aims to more than double its international remittances to IDR600 billion ($49 million), the Jakarta Post reported.

Indonesia’s leading telecoms player has been expanding its remittance business in the region, most recently into Malaysia, where about two million Indonesians work. It also offers the service in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Taiwan makers boost handset output 26%
Shipments of smartphones from Taiwan-based ODMs and own-brand makers increased 11.7 per cent in Q3 to 18.4 million units, according to Digitimes Research.

Combined with feature phones, the makers’ output rose 26 per cent to 20.9 million handsets from a year ago.

Digitimes Research said WCDMA models represented 80 per cent of the handset shipments, CDMA 2000 11 per cent and GSM 9.6 per cent. ODM Chi Mei Communication Systems accounted for 31 per cent of output, HTC 23 per cent, Compal Electronics 17.7 per cent, Arima Communications 13.8 per cent and Asustek Computer 13.4 per cent.