Dish Network Corp has rolled out an advertising campaign suggesting a deal by a Japanese company to acquire Sprint Nextel Corp could threaten U.S. national security, hoping to sway lawmakers and win support for its rival offer.

The campaign, which so far appears on the Internet and in Washington-area newspapers, is Dish's most public lobbying effort yet against Japan-based SoftBank Corp (Tokyo).

Russia-focused telecoms firm Vimpelcom's talks to sell a controlling stake in its Algerian mobile business Djezzy to Algeria are at a delicate stage but have not failed, a source with knowledge of the discussions said on Wednesday.

Algeria wants to nationalize Djezzy (Algiers, Algeria) and has pushed Vimpelcom (Amsterdam, Netherlands) into discussing a sale of a 51 percent stake.

A report by Dow Jones earlier said that talks had ended in failure, citing two officials close to the matter.

Telecom Italia is mulling spinning off its mobile unit along with its fixed-line network to bring new investors on board, three people, including a senior political source, told Reuters on Tuesday.

"The three-way split would allow the company to reduce debt and staff costs and favor the entry of new investors," the political source said. "It is a strategy that will allow the company to confront the market in the future more freely."

Later on Tuesday, the Italian phone company denied a break-up was under consideration.

Sprint Nextel Corp raised its buyout offer for wireless service provider Clearwire Corp to $3.40 per share, but the new bid was not high enough to impress some investors.

Clearwire (Bellevue, WA, USA) shares almost immediately traded around the new offer price, having consistently traded well above the old $2.97-per-share bid. Sprint (Overland Park, KS, USA) announced the revised price just hours before Clearwire was due to hold a special meeting for shareholders to vote on the original offer.

Investment group Crest Financial has made a final plea to Clearwire shareholders not to support Sprint’s takeover of the wireless broadband operator just a day before their vote takes place.

In a letter sent to Clearwire (Bellevue, WA, USA) shareholders, Crest argues that a decision on Clearwire’s future owner should be delayed until Sprint’s own status is resolved.

Wireless operator US Cellular has announced it will pay a special dividend of $5.75 a share following the successful completion of an asset sale to Sprint.

The dividend payout will total about $480 million – the same amount it has made from agreeing to hand over to Sprint airwaves and customers in the Midwest.

After months of speculation, Vodafone's Vittorio Colao will be under pressure this week to set out whether he may sell its prized stake in Verizon Wireless in what would be one of the biggest deals ever.

Chief executive for five years, Colao has said only that he has an "open mind" on Vodafone's 45-percent stake in the U.S. operator, whose majority owner, Verizon Communications (New York City, NY, USA), is interested in buying out the British company's share.

Telecoms giant America Movil has bolstered its presence in the US market with the acquisition of Start Wireless Group, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) with about 1.4 million customers.

The transaction was carried out through Tracfone, America Movil’s US subsidiary, but the terms and conditions have not been disclosed.

Start Wireless (Holland, OH, USA) operates under the Page Plus Cellular brand and specializes in prepaid plans for voice, messaging and data services.

With Europe at the forefront of the M2M revolution, revenues from M2M services are expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 33% between 2011 and 2016 in a selection of European markets, including Germany, France, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the UK.

Such is the finding of new research from Frost & Sullivan, which reckons the number of SIM connections will rise to 75 million in 2016, with the UK emerging as the biggest market and Germany a close second.

VimpelCom has reported strong gains in first-quarter profits thanks to cost-cutting measures and a steady top-line performance.

Owned by Mikhail Fridman – the Russian billionaire – and Norwegian telecoms incumbent Telenor, the operator saw net income rise by 28%, to $408 million, compared with the same period last year, with revenues flat at $5.6 billion.

“These results demonstrate further progress on our Value Agenda and we remain on track to achieve our longer-term objectives,” said Jo Lunder, the chief executive of VimpelCom (Amsterdam, Netherlands).