TOP NEWS

* Vodafone Idea Ltd., or Vi, sold its 11.15% stake in Indus Towers Ltd. to Bharti Infratel Ltd. for 37.6 billion Indian rupees, according to a filing. A prepayment of 24 billion rupees owed to Bharti Infratel will be adjusted in line with the terms of the agreement. Following the divestment of Vodafone Idea's stake in Indus, Bharti Infratel's merger with Indus Towers has been completed.

* Australian telecommunications provider Uniti Group Ltd. said Nov. 20 that it completed the acquisition of carrier OptiComm Ltd., a week after the transaction was approved by the country's federal court. Uniti now holds all of the shares on issue in OptiComm. OptiComm CEO Paul Cross and Stephen Picton, CEO Uniti W&I, will both leave the business.

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TECHNOLOGY

* SK Telecom Co. Ltd. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. developed next-generation cloud core network system applying Service Communication Proxy technology that can provide better 5G services, ZDNet Korea reported. The new core network system, named T-Mesh, can improve communication speeds by 30% and provide stable data traffic management.

* Chinese conglomerate Tencent Holdings Ltd. co-led a €93 million series C funding round for Italy-based Satispay SPA. The latest fundraising took the company's post-money value to €248 million.

* ARM Ltd. unit Treasure Data Inc. will find a buyer or try to go public before NVIDIA Corp. completes its acquisition of Arm from SoftBank Group Corp., Nikkei Asia reported, citing Treasure Data CEO Pankaj Tibrewal.

* China Mobile Ltd. reached a strategic partnership with Peng Cheng Laboratory to enhance the investment in technological advancement and for the collaboration between the communications industry and other businesses, Securities Times reported. The duo also launched the Greater Bay Area Innovation Lab for further research and development.

* Chinese electronics manufacturer Xiaomi Corp. founder Lei Jun said the company is planning to build a 100% automated manufacturing plant with an output capacity of 10 million mobile phone units a year, Shanghai Securities News reported.

* The government of Shenzhen launched a campaign to promote the sales of 5G products by providing an up to 1,000 Chinese yuan subsidy per transaction, Securities Times reported. The campaign covers 75,000 products from different brands including Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Apple Inc., Xiaomi and others.

* NTT DOCOMO INC. and Sanrio Co. Ltd. agreed to a business alliance for new business development in the extended reality, or XR, field. With the tie-up, the two companies plan to enter the XR business by leveraging Sanrio's character brand strength and character business experience, and DOCOMO's expertise in mobile.

* Sony Corp. appointed president of brand strategy, Midori Tomita, as president of its film unit Sony Pictures Entertainment (Japan) Inc., effective Jan. 1, 2021.

MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT

* Japanese video game developer BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc. entered into a capital and business alliance with American startup Genies Inc. Under the alliance, the company aims to capitalize on its expertise in character IPs and games, as well as Bandai Namco Group's ability to expand into a wide range of businesses.

* JOOX LLC's Thailand unit added a new voting feature that will allow users to upvote their favorite songs to the JOOX Top 20 Social Chart, helping to promote artists within the platform, Manager reported.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

* An Oaktree Capital Management LP-backed consortium offered to provide funding of about $2 billion to $2.5 billion to Vodafone Idea Ltd., or Vi, Bloomberg News reported, citing sources. The U.S. investment firm reportedly worked with other firms such as Värde Partners Inc. for the proposed deal with the Indian telco.

* Indonesian telco operator PT XL Axiata Tbk completed the transfer of telco towers to PT Profesional Telekomunikasi Indonesia, Kontan reported. XL Axiata has so far completed the sales of 1,642 units of tower, and the transaction value is 2.21 trillion Indonesian rupiah.

POLICY AND REGULATION

* Maxis Broadband Sdn. Bhd., a subsidiary of Malaysian telco operator Maxis Bhd., has been served a 140 million Malaysian ringgit tax bill by the Inland Revenue Board, Free Malaysia Today reported. The tax bill is due to additional assessment with penalties in relation to the disallowance of the company's deduction of interest expenses that were incurred.

MARKETS

Click here for a summary of indexes on the MI platform.

Nozomi Ibayashi, Hyegyu Park, Emily Lai, Ed Eduard and Patrick Tibke contributed to this report.

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