MetroPCS shareholders have given their blessing to the proposed merger of the operator with T-Mobile USA, removing the final obstacle to the deal, which is now expected to close by May 1.

According to a statement from T-Mobile USA (Bellevue, WA, USA) owner Deutsche Telekom (Bonn, Germany), a majority of MetroPCS (Richardson, TX, USA) shareholders voted in favor of the merger on Wednesday.

Investment company Crest Financial has once again lashed out at Sprint’s proposed takeover of Clearwire, urging Clearwire’s management to shun the “coercive” terms.

Crest (Cerritos, CA, USA) owns a 5.1% stake in Clearwire (Bellevue, WA, USA) and claims to be the largest shareholder that is unaligned with Sprint.

The company is vehemently opposed to the deal, which would see Sprint (Overland Park, KS, USA) acquire full control of Clearwire, and last month hired proxy-solicitation firm D.F. King & Co. (New York City, NY, USA) to help it fight the planned takeover.

France Telecom is focusing on new superfast mobile services to repair the damage done by a costly price war in its home market, which has eroded its market share and profitability.

Europe's fourth-biggest telecom operator posted a 4 percent drop in first-quarter sales on Wednesday due to mobile price cuts in France, weak corporate demand, and regulatory changes.

Operating cash flow fell 12.9 percent to 1.98 billion euros ($2.58 billion), showing how the operator's home market had become less profitable after the launch of low-cost rival Iliad (Paris, France).

Etisalat will make a binding offer on Wednesday to buy Vivendi's 53 percent stake in Morocco's Maroc Telecom, a deal in which the UAE telecom firm is expected to face stiff competition from its regional rival in Qatar.

French media group Vivendi (Paris, France) wants to sell its stake in the Moroccan business to help reduce its debts - a deal seen as more critical since Vivendi failed to sell video game firm Activision Blizzard (Santa Monica, CA, USA) and Brazilian telecom unit

GVT (Curitiba, Brazil) as part of a much-heralded strategic shift.

AT&T Inc reported a net loss of cellphone subscribers in the first quarter as it lost market share to bigger rival Verizon Wireless, sending its shares down about 2 percent.

As a result AT&T's revenue missed Wall Street expectations as its subscriber growth was driven by tablet computer users who pay lower monthly fees than phone users.

Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim's telecom giant, America Movil, said on Tuesday it has approved an additional 40 billion pesos ($3.24 billion) to strengthen the fund it uses to repurchase shares.

The repurchase plan, originally announced by the company on March 19, was approved by the company's shareholder assembly on Monday, America Movil (Mexico City, Mexico) said in a statement to the Mexican stock exchange.

Latin America's biggest phone company also approved a dividend payment of 0.22 pesos per share for its "AA," "A," and "L" series shares, according to the statement.

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world's No.2 telecoms equipment maker, toned down its long-term target for networking equipment sales to enterprises, saying a prior figure was too optimistic.

Eric Xu, Huawei (Shenzhen, China) executive vice president and one of its rotating CEOs, also voiced frustration with security issues that are thwarting the Chinese company in the key U.S. telecoms equipment market.

Sprint Nextel said on Monday that its board had formed a special committee of independent directors to review Dish Network's $25.5 billion takeover bid for the No. 3 U.S. mobile provider.

Sprint (Overland Park, KS, USA) had said last week that it would evaluate the Dish (Meridian, CO, USA) offer, which challenges Sprint's October agreement to sell 70 percent of its shares to Japan's SoftBank Corp (Tokyo, Japan) for $20.1 billion.

China Mobile has reported net profit of RMB27.88 billion ($4.5 billion) for the first three months of 2013, just 0.3% higher than in the same quarter of 2012, as efforts to increase the usage of smartphone data services ate into its revenues.

The rate of growth is the lowest that China Mobile (Beijing, China) has reported in three quarters and came despite a 5.7% increase in quarterly revenues, to RMB134.7 billion.

Saudi Telecom has reported a 38.5% fall in first-quarter net income, to SAR1.55 billion ($413 million), due largely to a SAR500 million impairment charge against its investment in Indian operator Aircel.

Despite the bottom-line setback, the state-backed incumbent reported a 3.7% increase in revenues, to SAR11.47 billion, and said efficiency improvements had helped to bolster gross profits by 2.6%, to SAR6.49 billion.