The University of Dubai and MEA-Comm UAE, a technology company working to transform the region into a thriving digital economy, say they have signed an MoU to launch the first regional 5G testbed to, as they put it, “accelerate Industry Revolution 4.0 in the UAE and MEA region”.

The Cameroon business of pan-African telecom giant MTN Group has received some encouraging news from its parent company in the form of a promised major injection of cash.

Liquid Intelligent Technologies completed its 730km fibre network expansion from South Africa to Botswana in a move to bolster network resilience and capacity.

Ukrainian telco Kyivstar announced on Wednesday it’s launching voice over Wi-Fi (VoWiFi) services for eligible subscribers, enabling them to make calls via Wi-Fi access points in locations with weak mobile signals.

Global satellite operator Viasat said on Wednesday it has demonstrated its direct-to-device (D2D) satellite connectivity technology for the first time in the United Arab Emirates, marking its third such demo in the last two months.

Pan-African infrastructure investor and asset manager Africa50 has announced a US$15 million investment in Raya Data Centre (RDC), a leading system integrator in MEA.

Cirion Technologies, a digital infrastructure and technology provider in Latin America, has announced the expansion of its fibre network in Mexico, with a new AI-ready fibre duct, enhancing connectivity between Mexico City and Querétaro.

Ericsson and Saudi Arabian telco Mobily said on Tuesday they have successfully completed a trial of Ericsson’s 5G uplink interference optimizer, an Open RAN rApp that uses AI to make 5G uplinks run faster and more efficiently.

Thai satellite operator Thaicom says that its subsidiary IPSTAR India has been granted approval by the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe) to provide broadband satellite services in India.

Tower deals are again in the news in major Asian territories, this time in Pakistan and the Philippines.

Two notable fintech deals have recently been announced in the United Arab Emirates. The latest involves payments services company Worldline, which has partnered with Telr, a Dubai-based payment gateway aggregator and provider, to launch an e-commerce payments solution for the rapidly expanding UAE market.

Qatari telecommunications and ICT services provider, Ooredoo, with Infobip, a global cloud communications platform, and tech giant Microsoft, plan to bring what is described as a revolutionary tool in conversational artificial intelligence to the Qatar market. It’s called AI Hub.

Yango, one of Côte d’Ivoire’s most trusted platforms, which handles millions of rides and deliveries each month through its partners, has teamed up with COFINA, a leading mesofinance institution in the country and Yabx, an embedded finance platform that builds credit profiles for thin or no-file customers, to introduce a driver cash advance service.

Chile is now home to an optical telescope for global satellite tracking coverage. It’s been installed and activated by Neuraspace, a leading name in space traffic management (STM).

Vodafone Idea is boosting its backhaul capacity and network performance with packet and optical transmission products from Tejas Networks.

Malaysian telco U Mobile said on Monday it will deploy contact centre solutions from Amazon Web Services (AWS) based on generative AI in its contact centre after running a successful proof-of-concept (PoC) for the past six months.

Direct-to-device (D2D) LEO satellite operator AST SpaceMobile said on Monday it has signed a definitive ten-year commercial agreement with Vodafone Group to roll out its services in Vodafone’s markets worldwide.

Edotco said on Monday its Bangladesh unit has signed a multi-year deal with Grameenphone to extend their existing infrastructure leasing agreement to support the telco’s 4G network expansion into underserved areas.

State owned service provider Cabo Verde Telecom (CV Telecom) has announced an international public tender for replacing inter-island optical fibre, allowing broadband internet to be distributed throughout Cape Verde, a West African island state.

The drive to ensure that the data centre industry can be seen as a responsible user of power continues, with two recent announcements in Asia and Africa emphasising plans to use renewables.

Nokia and UAE-based telco du, from Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), said they have deployed what they claim is the first commercial deployment of a 5G Cloud RAN solution in the Middle East and Africa region.

Ooredoo Qatar announced on Sunday it has launched a new location analytics and intelligence solution that leverages the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT)'s TASMU Platform for smart city solutions.

Tonga now has 5G after the country’s two main mobile operators – state-owned incumbent Tonga Communications Corporation (TCC) and Digicel Tonga commercially launched their respective 5G networks within a week of each other.

Sudan’s telecoms regulator, the National Telecommunications Corporation (NTC), has partnered with mobile network operator Sudatel and NGOs to connect relief workers in the conflict-ridden country.

ST Telemedia said on Thursday that it will sell the majority of its stake in Malaysian telco U Mobile to local firm Mawar Setiam, which is majority-owned by U Mobile chairman Vincent Tan, in a deal that could see the country’s royal family hold a combined controlling stake in the telco.

Brazilian telecommunications tower company Highline, owned by the US-based DigitalBridge group, says it has successfully raised almost US$380 million through a new debenture issue, its largest fundraising effort to date and its first issuance of tax-exempt incentivised debentures in the telecommunications infrastructure sector.

Members of the Caribbean ELIte Alliance (CELIA) consortium have announced plans for the introduction of CELIA, described as a new high-capacity ‘express’ cable in the Caribbean region connecting Aruba, Martinique, Antigua, Puerto Rico and Boca Raton in the US.

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) has signed a two-year extension with Nokia to expand its 4G and 5G network across Indonesia.

Connectivity solutions provider iBASIS announced it was selected as Caribbean-based operator Paradise Mobile’s international gateway partner.

Vodafone Group has announced the sale of its remaining 3% stake in the Indian tower company Indus Towers for US$300 million to help reduce its significant debt pile.