Each year, February marks the telecom industry calendar with the happening of the Mobile World Congress - the world’s most important and biggest telecom event. Unlike other editions where handsets have grabbed the headlines, this year's event focused more on mobile operating systems and applications. Well now, it is becoming undeniable that applications’ stores changed the telecom market trends.

Anyone who has kept up-to-date with the telecom industry changes and evolution will not doubt that LTE became a commercial reality with trials and commercial deployments all over the world. The LTE technology has out-phased and out-shadowed all other technologies so far. We are already witnessing LTE mobile networks in action. Vendors find that operators are ready for LTE deployment, while operators see in LTE a great potential to deliver advanced broadband services for their customers and keep their competitive edge.

Our extensive coverage for this year’s Mobile World Congress revolves obviously on LTE technology which is taking the center stage of major vendors’ announcements. Major if not all vendors showcased their solutions and services related to LTE. In our coverage we highlight Nokia Siemens Networks, Ericsson, Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent’s latest LTE milestones and trials.

Our cover story this month highlights the giant expansion of the Qtel Group who grew from a one-country telecom operator to an international pioneer. The Qtel Group has expanded its footprints from 1 to 17 markets across the Middle East, North Africa and Asia in only 4 years. Our interview with Dr. Nasser Marafih, Chief Executive Officer of the Qtel Group sheds the light on the Group’s milestones, growth, and further investment considerations.
In this month’s financial feature; we explore the Zain Africa – Bharti Airtel deal. After months of speculations and after the resignation of Dr. Saad Al-Barrak, things are still shaky with Zain. However the company will finally sell its African assets to the Indian mobile phone operator Bharti Airtel and the talks are exclusive until March 25. Until that date and until everything is cleared, we ask the question: is Zain Africa a good deal for Bharti Airtel?
Finally, in our industry trend section we take a look at widgets and how content and applications are driving the industry.