The South African government has revealed plans to close the connectivity coverage gap in rural areas, emphasising this as a key initiative to empower poorer communities and stimulate economic growth.

Vietnam has this week announced that it aims to deploy two undersea internet cables by the end of next year. It has also said that 5G services will be deployed across the country by that time.

As AI technologies become all-pervasive, they are starting to impact service development and digital intelligence transformation across a range of industry sectors, in turn imposing ever greater demands on existing enterprise and carrier network infrastructures.

Indian telco Bharti Airtel and Nokia announced on Tuesday they will collaborate on an initiative to introduce energy-efficient solutions and practices across Airtel’s 4G/5G RANs using AI and machine learning.

Nigerian fintech startup Okra launched a new cloud infrastructure service on Tuesday, making it the latest of several startups in the country that aim to provide a local alternative to cloud giants like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Cisco announced several deals on Tuesday it says will accelerate AI innovation in Malaysia, including a collaboration agreement with Telekom Malaysia (TM) to help government digital agency Jabatan Digital Negara (JDN) upgrade its digital infrastructure.

iBASIS, a provider of communications solutions for operators and digital players worldwide, and TelEm Group, one of the leading mobile networks in the Caribbean island of Saint Maarten, have announced a five-year exclusive partnership to manage TelEm’s international voice services in key markets.

The government of the Indian state of Maharashtra has approved the establishment of what are called Green Integrated Data Centre Parks, aiming for an investment of around US$20 billion.

MTC Namibia launched its mobile financial service, MTC Maris, as the Namibian government hailed the operator for “stepping ahead” of its rivals, while urging them to follow suit in order to connect the fifth of the population that remains unbanked.

Indonesian operator Telkomsel says it is trialing facial recognition to facilitate its processes for prepaid card registration and card replacement, making it the second telco in the country to embrace the biometric technology.

Telkom Indonesia's satellite subsidiary Telkomsat said on Monday it is partnering with vertical services firm Bhinneka Nusantara Mandiri (BNM) to use capacity from the new Merah Putih 2 satellite to accelerate digital transformation in the maritime sector.

All four of Egypt’s mobile operators are officially clear to offer 5G services after the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (NTRA) awarded 5G licences to Vodafone Egypt, Orange Egypt, and e& Egypt on Monday.

Indian communications service provider Vodafone Idea (Vi) has strengthened its longstanding network partnership with Ericsson through the award of major 4G and 5G contracts which, Ericsson says, will see the tech giant extend its network share.

Data-driven strategies for customer growth and retention are in the news again – this time thanks to a division of Zain Group, a technology and digital communications provider operating in eight markets across the Middle East and Africa.

Burundi and Zambia are to be connected via an underwater fibre optic cable, following an agreement at the second Digital Government Africa Summit, which took place from 2-4 October 2024 in Zambia’s capital Lusaka.

We’ve written a lot this year about the effect of the devaluation of naira on telecoms services in Nigeria. But another African country where service providers have been hit by the devaluation of its currency is Ethiopia, whose state-owned telecom provider, Ethio Telecom, has now announced tariff increases across many of its services.

The battle for India’s end users is not just about coverage on streets and in homes. Continuing the trend of bringing wireless communications to public rail transport, two of the country’s big three operators have just announced new metro coverage achievements in two major cities.

Mobile operator Orange Burkina Faso is reportedly unable to access almost 15% of its telecom sites due to the security situation in those areas as fighting between the military government and Islamist armed groups continues.

Ericsson said on Friday that Bangladesh telco Grameenphone has completed deployment of its mediation solution that leverages big data analytics to provide better and more useful insights into how Grameenphone’s network is being used.

Globe Telecom says it has successfully conducted a trial of Lynk Global’s direct-to-device (D2D) satellite service in Zambales as of a series of planned pilots to test the service’s viability in the Philippines.

CelcomDigi has enhanced its fibre broadband services to strengthen its position against competitors as demand for high-speed internet continues to grow in Malaysia.

In July, we reported that Thai billionaire Sarath Ratanavadi was planning to merge two companies that he controls - Intouch Holdings, which holds a majority 40.4% stake in AIS, and power firm Gulf Energy Development. Now, shareholders in the firms have reportedly approved the proposal.

Apple will begin selling iPhones manufactured in India and has revealed plans to open four new retail locations in the country.

Dialog Axiata unveiled what it described as Sri Lanka’s first AI-powered health scanning feature in its telemedicine app Doc990, which claims to be able to monitor multiple key indicators of health directly from smartphones.

Satellite operator Thaicom announced its subsidiary Space Tech Innovation Limited (STI) had signed a deal with SpaceX to launch a satellite to provide gigabit connectivity across the Asia-Pacific.

Omantel and Optiva have upgraded and migrated over 200 Omantel products and services across all business lines to Optiva’s convergent charging engine, hosted on Omantel’s private cloud.

This week saw a significant agreement in the Middle Eastern data centre market as INTRO Technology announced the signing of a strategic memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Oman Data Park, the largest data centre and cloud service provide in Oman, to establish what us to be known as the Kemet data centre in the Suez Canal Economic Zone.

Following last week’s announcement by data centre company ODATA that is expanding its wind power supply in Brazil, another story, this time from India, underlines the growing importance of offering – and being seen to offer – clean energy.

At the 6G Conference held in Istanbul, on September 24, 2024, Dr. Wen Tong, Huawei Wireless CTO, delivered a keynote speech on 6G standardization and innovation. With the release of the ITU-R 6G vision framework, the 3GPP will start 6G standardization in 2025.

Internet exchange operator DE-CIX has struck a deal to enter the South American market via Brazil’s Elea Data Centers, which will host its first two IX PoPs in Brazil.

Papua New Guinea’s state-owned wholesale operator PNG DataCo says that it has completed an upgrade of its internet gateway with a 100-Gbps link that enables it to migrate traffic onto the PIPE Pacific Cable 1 (PPC-1) subsea cable.

5G market share will overtake 3G and 2G next year in Latin America, according to a joint study from industry association 5G Americas and research firm GlobalData. In addition, total data traffic on both fixed and mobile networks in Latin America is expected to more than double in four years.

A timely announcement from the ITU, the United Nations specialised agency for digital technology, is aimed at enhancing efforts to protect the world's digital infrastructure and secure global connectivity. To be precise, it’s about submarine cables.