Ooredoo and Zain have entered merger discussions with Dubai-based tower company TASC, and are considering combining some 30,000 towers in the MENA region into a new jointly-owned company. This would create the largest towerco in the region, however, Ooredoo’s Oman footprint is not on the cards. Nokia has announced the deployment of a private LTE network for Xcel Energy in the USA, to help the utility add more renewable energy production sources to its grid. With 3.7 million customers, Xcel is a sizeable win for Nokia, which will use the network for both control and sensor data collection. Xcel is using 900 MHz spectrum via Anterix, and Nokia’s Modular Private Wireless (MPW) suite. Work on the ITU-R’s IMT-2030 draft has…