Bharti Airtel, Asia's leading integrated telecom services provider on Friday said that it has hiked its stake in Bharti Hexacom to 70 per cent by acquiring 1.1 per cent from a Kuwait-based firm.

Under the deal, Bharti Airtel Ltd has acquired 1.11 per cent stake, or 2,780,306 equity shares, in Bharti Hexacom Ltd from Mobile Telecommunications Co, KSC, Kuwait.

With this latest acquisition, the company's shareholding in Bharti Hexacom stands higher at 70 per cent from 68.89 per cent.

Helsinki - Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, said Thursday it had secured a 500 million-euro (629 million- dollar) loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB).

The five-year loan was to be used to co-finance software research and development (R&D) projects, mainly for Nokia's Symbian-based smartphones, Nokia said.

Symbian is an open-source operating system used for mobile devices, and is supported by among others Nokia.

DTH operators can now hope to breathe easy.

The Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry has indicated that it would cut the annual license fee for direct-to-home (DTH) operators from the existing 10% to 6% of their revenues.

Karvy Stock Broking Limited has suggested investors to ‘sell’ Idea Cellular stock as there are full chances of a downward trend in this stock.

According to Karvy, investors can sell the stock around Rs 49.50 with a strict stop loss of Rs 52.50 to achieve an intraday target of Rs 45.

Karvy feels that Idea stock would remain under high pressure due to existing market condition.

Barcelona, Spain -The world's largest telecoms manufacturer insisted there was no "crisis" in the phone business despite the worldwide economic slump, as the industry's main trade fair opened in Barcelona on Monday.

"There is no telecoms crisis," Ericsson's chief executive Carl- Henric Svanberg told reporters at the Mobile World Congress.

Mobile networks are suffering from fluctuating exchange rates, and with it how much companies can charge, but the telecoms business was not shirking the challenge of the downturn.

Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communication (RCOM) has signed an agreement with US-based Ditech Networks to deploy the latter's voice enhancement solution on its recently unveiled GSM network.

The deal is estimated to be worth Rs 50 crore and deployment is expected to enhance voice clarity on Reliance Mobile by approximately 30 per cent'.

Under the arrangement, RCOM will initially deploy Ditech's voice enhancement solutions across Top 10 towns and then extend coverage across other locations.

It should be noted that on Thursday, RCom has already commenced trial runs on Ditech's network