Brazil’s Banco Neon has selected Gemalto to deliver Visa Quick Read debit cards to its customers.

Thai operator dtac has selected Nokia's IP/Optical portfolio to bolster its backbone network.

Vodacom is aiming to boost its black ownership with the sale of 2.6% of its shares being negotiated by the South African Public Investment Corporation (PIC).

Turkcell will be getting an investment injection following an agreement signed between Russian firms Alfa and VTB.

The mobile market in Nepal continues to grow at a moderately strong rate in a relatively mature market, although growth began to taper off by 2015, according to R&M.

Beleaguered Brazilian operator Oi is unlikely to receive a government bailout, according to the country’s communications minister.

The Mexican government has disqualified one of the bidders for a tender to construct and operate a wholesale mobile network in the country.

Ooredoo Group and Ericsson have agreed a five-year contract to implement a new revenue management system across the Group’s footprint in the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia.

Telia Estonia is launching direct carrier billing on the Google Play app store with Fortumo.

Palau Telecoms has increased network capacity for the fourth time in 20 months, growing its service capacity by 70% over this period.

Turkcell has selected Ericsson as its partner to manage and operate its mobile and fibre optic fixed network, which includes microwave links and covers all technologies from 2G to 4G/LTE.

Omantel Wholesale is interconnecting the Gulf to Africa (G2A) and Silk Road Gateway - 1 (SRG-1) cable systems to deliver ultra-low latency networking between Asia and Africa.

Eutelsat and BICS have partnered to launch an on-demand connectivity solution for African telecom operators.

NTT Communications Corporation has launched the Asia Pacific Gateway (APG), a high-bandwidth optical submarine cable network connecting regions and countries in the Asia.

Indonesian operator Smartfren is launching direct carrier billing from Fortumo across its operations.

Eutelsat Communications and Yahsat have signed a multi-year capacity agreement to provide high-performance commercial Ka-band capacity to Eutelsat’s African broadband venture Broadband for Africa.

Turkish tower company Global Tower has put its scheduled IPO on ice “until the markets become more reliable and stable”.

Nokia has signed two Memoranda of Confirmation frame agreements with Filipino operator Globe Telecom.

West African connectivity and data centre solutions company MainOne has chosen Minkels as its data centre supplier.

ip.access has entered into a strategic partnership with Única do Brasil to support the roll out of its cloud-based multi-operator small cell platform, Viper.

Intelsat S.A. is donating capacity to the American Red Cross to support relief operations in Haiti following the devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew.

Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) and Liquid Telecom entered a joint venture that will see the latter lease excess optical fibres from BPC’s network.

Xura has announced an agreement with the Telefónica Group to become a global messaging partner across all countries operated by the multinational.

Israeli incumbent operator Bezeq is undertaking a countrywide G.fast deployment with Adtran as the prime project vendor.

Subscriber driven access specialist Calix is partnering with Armenian service provider Ucom to deliver the benefits of NG-PON2 to the operator’s wireline and mobile subscribers.

Telecom Egypt is deploying Ciena’s GeoMesh solution and packet-optical platforms for low-latency connectivity.