The first two days of this week’s CTIA Wireless Show in Las Vegas have been marked by a flurry of M2M announcements, with partnerships between MVNOs and network operators emerging as a major theme. M2M Zone provides a round-up of the most important news items.

Indian operator Sistema Shyam has managed to reduce its net loss to INR7.79 billion ($143 million) for the fourth quarter of 2012, from INR11.98 billion during the same period in 2011, despite the considerable uncertainty over the company’s future towards the end of last year.

The operator said the net loss would have narrowed further were it not for unfavorable movements in exchange rates.

Singaporean telecoms incumbent SingTel has sold its 30% stake in Pakistan’s Warid Telecom to the Abu Dhabi Group, which already owned the other 70% of the loss-making operator.

SingTel will receive a cash payment of $150 million for its shares as well as 7.5% of the proceeds from any future sale of Warid (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates).

It says the sale follows a strategic review of the investment, its competitive position and opportunity.

Indian ministers have urged a 50% cut in reserve pricing for CDMA airwaves due to be auctioned in March, reports Reuters.

A panel of ministers told India’s cabinet, which has the ultimate say on spectrum pricing, that fees should be lowered by 30–50%.

A frequency auction in November raised less than a quarter of the INR400 billion the government was targeting, with CDMA airwaves going unsold.

Due to begin on March 11, the next auction is set to include GSM airwaves worth up to INR200 billion, plus a number of CDMA concessions.

Growth in Brazil’s mobile-phone market tailed off last month with the addition of just 436,000 new customers, compared with 959,860 in September, according to figures from regulatory authority Anatel.

The data will be taken as a sign of increasing market maturity – penetration hit 131.7% in October, according to Anatel’s data – with Brazil’s economy weakened by the global slump.

Between them, Brazilian mobile-phone operators now serve a total of 259.29 million connections, with prepaid customers accounting for about 81% of those.

Tata Teleservices and Videocon Group have withdrawn their bids for spectrum due to be auctioned by India’s government in a process beginning on November 12, reports the country’s Economic Times newspaper.

Because the two organizations had been the only ones to bid for the airwaves used on CDMA-based phones, the government is apparently stuck with a slice of spectrum that attracts no interest.

Tata Teleservices (Mumbai, India), India’s sixth-biggest mobile-phone operator, was originally looking to replace operating permits it is set to lose in three zones.

Telecom New Zealand has reported huge gains in profitability thanks to one-off adjustments related to the demerger of its infrastructure business in December last year.

New Zealand’s incumbent operator reported net profit of NZ$1.2 billion ($973 million) for 2012, compared with just NZ$166 million last year, several months after agreeing to spin off Chorus.

The company agreed to the separation under pressure from the New Zealand government, but Chorus was subsequently awarded the bulk of contracts to build a new fibre-optic broadband network across the country.

With data traffic from video downloads and on-the-go web surfers clogging up telecoms networks, mobile equipment makers such as Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks should be booming. But while iPhone-maker Apple Inc's shareholders are waxing rich on a communications revolution driven by smartphones and tablet computers, those who make the infrastructure for the information superhighway are being squeezed.

The global 2G, 3G, and 4G equipment market decreased 14% to just under $10 billion in the first quarter of 2012 following an 8% increase the previous quarter, reports market research firm Infonetics Research in its new report.

Alexander Dennis, the UK's largest bus and coach manufacturer, has announced that Traffilog, a web-based telematics provider, will be installed in their public service vehicles in time for the 2012 Olympic Games. Traffilog has also been selected by Kings Ferry, the UK coach operator, to secure its fleet of coaches they are supplying for the police and VIPs during the Games.