There’s finally some good news about repairs to the West Africa Cable System (WACS) submarine fibre cable – at least for subscribers in South Africa.

It’s been a while since we last reported on the Right of Way regulations for telecommunications infrastructure rollout in India, and the problems the Department of Telecom (DoT) has had enforcing them. However, little seems to have changed in recent months.

The prime minster of Burkina Faso, Christophe Dabire, has labelled Orange’s propose price hike “unacceptable”.

Orange’s local unit in Slovakia, Orange Slovensko, has selected Nokia to prepare its Radio Access Network for 5G.

A senior official in Colombia’s Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications is being investigated by the country’s Attorney General’s Office in relation to the country’s recent spectrum auction.

Recent third quarter 2019 results from the Vodafone Group highlighted a good performance in Africa for Vodacom, while efforts are continuing to simplify the group to two differentiated, scaled geographic regions: Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.

Both Zambia – through state-owned operator Zambia Telecommunications Company (Zamtel) – and Nigeria appear to be pushing through new rules on mobile subscriber registration.

Guyana’s regulator has dismissed a proposal from Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT) to settle a long-running tax dispute.

Another country is to bid farewell to CDMA as Nepal Telecom says it will switch off CDMA services by July 2021.

Repairs to submarine cables bringing internet connectivity to Vietnam have been rescheduled.

5G continues to make news as five Thai operators submit bids for spectrum and a Polish operator claims it is ready to commercialise 5G.

The regulator of Honduras has confirmed that it intends to release the 3.5GHz band for mobile use.

Mavenir has deployed its cloud-native, converged IMS solution for both T-Mobile Czech Republic (TMCZ) and Slovak Telekom (ST).

Hard on the heels of its recent 5G announcement comes more good news for Vodacom in the form of recently published results for the company that indicate impressive growth, especially in South Africa.

According to media reports from East Africa, Airtel Tanzania plans to more than double the number of its 4G network sites following the recent issuing of a permit.

According to regional press reports, Cuba’s number of fixed line connections is growing and fast mobile growth is expected for this year.

Vodacom South Africa is lining up a 5G launch for this year.

Uzbekistan’s Ucell has partnered with P.I. Works to implement an integrated network and business performance management platform.

Speedcast Government, which provides mission-critical communications for military, government, non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations, is supporting a UN agency and an independent national electoral committee in Niger in their mission to ensure that no electoral fraud takes place.

With data demand growing in the country, Indonesian operator PT XL Axiata has announced what appears to be a fairly aggressive fibre-optic network deployment.

Tele2 has been informed by Croatia’s competition authority that its proposed sale of its local unit will receive formal clearance within the next month.

The recent SAT-3/WASC and WACS cable system problems that disrupted services in a number of African countries have still to be completely solved, although restoration of services seems to be getting closer, according to local press reports.

In a fairly turbulent week for telecoms, there has at least been one encouraging piece of telecommunications news: an education-linked story from Zimbabwe – or rather from a Zimbabwean AI expert.