Swedish telecoms incumbent TeliaSonera has beefed up its business in Kazakhstan with the $170 million acquisition of WiMax operator Alem Communications and purchase of a minority stake in KazTransCom, a backbone network operator, for a fee of $35 million.

The transactions will help to bolster the position of Kcell (Almaty, Kazakhstan), TeliaSonera’s Kazakh subsidiary, which recently completed an IPO in London and Kazakhstan.

Ciena Corporation, a supplier of telecommunications network equipment, on Monday announced that Samsung SDS Co., Ltd., an information and communications technology service provider, has deployed Ciena's full portfolio of intelligent Packet-Optical Switching, Packet-Optical Transport, Carrier Ethernet (CES) and ON-Center Management Suite services to create its own private network, which will connect offices and employees across multiple locations globally.

Ciena Corporation, a supplier of telecommunications network equipment, on Wednesday announced that Sprint is upgrading its optical backbone network with Ciena's 6500 Packet-Optical Platform. The updated network, powered exclusively by Ciena, will enable Sprint to enhance transport network scalability and performance.

China Unicom (Beijing, P.R.C.) and China Telecom (Beijing, P.R.C.), the country's second and third largest telecom operators, have asked Chinese regulators to halt an antimonopoly probe and will work towards lowering internet access charges over coming years, they said on Friday.

Silicon Valley is home to some of the most powerful technology companies in the world.  Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel, Sony, IBM and Oracle all headquarter in and around the Silicon Valley, and many of those companies started and built their company there.  With so many technology companies headquartered in the area, it makes sense that Vodafone (London, England) decided to launch a Research and Development (R&D) Center in that same location.

RACO Wireless (Cincinnati, Ohio), a provider of machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity, announced on Wednesday that it will provide the M2M backbone for Securus Inc. (Cary, N.C.), a provider of GPS-based products and services, as well as provide an M2M service package for vertical market applications to Direct Communication Solutions (DCS) (Coral Spring, Fla.), a distributor of embedded modules for M2M developers.

MegaFon is building a country-wide IP mobile backhaul network to reduce costs, increase network capacity and ensure smooth migration from legacy technology to an all-IP transport platform. The operator has signed up Nokia Siemens Networks in one of Russia’s most significant systems integrator deals.

DragonWave Inc. is helping bring mobile services to under-served areas of the United States. The Canadian provider of high-capacity packet microwave solutions announced last week at CTIA Wireless in Orlando, Florida, multiple rural U.S. deployments.

Broadband World Forum Asia will be held on May 10 and 11, 2011 at the KL Convention Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and this year will be co-located with IP&TV Forum Asia to complement the activity within both the fixed and mobile operator markets and the content and TV ecosystems.