Bahrain-based technology group Beyon has announced that its telecommunications arm, Batelco, has launched the first off-grid mobile site in the region powered entirely by renewable solar and wind energy.

As industries worldwide accelerate digital transformation in an AI-driven era, resilient, high-speed networks have become essential.

India’s competition regulator has ordered WhatsApp to cease sharing data for advertising purposes with other Meta-owned applications for five years and fined the US tech giant US$24.5 million for antitrust violations.

China Mobile Pakistan (CMPak), which operates under the Zong 4G brand, says that it is now logging 7 billion recharge transactions per month via its digital channels, which now account for 40% of prepaid recharges.

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) says its India unit has broken ground on its edge data centre in Jaipur, which also marks its entry into India’s edge data centre market.

Global connectivity provider Angola Cables is reportedly planning to expand into Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe to cash in on Africa's growing appetite for digital infrastructure – provided regulators make it easier to roll out that infrastructure.

Eutelsat OneWeb announced on Thursday it has signed a new multi-year agreement with satellite solutions and services provider Q-KON to expand LEO satellite services across Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in the southern region.

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and Indonesian tech firm GoTo Gojek Tokopedia said on Thursday they have begun work on Sahabat-AI, an open-source large language model (LLM) ecosystem specifically designed for Bahasa Indonesia and other local languages.

Operator MTN South Africa and leading tech vendor Huawei say that they have completed the first 5.5G network trial in South Africa at the MTN head office in Johannesburg.

Global communications company Viasat has announced the launch of a home and mobile broadband service in Mexico that, they say, will boost cellular coverage in the country.

Yet another renewable energy deal aimed at the power-hungry data centre market has been announced this week. It involves digital infrastructure company Equinix and renewable energy provider CleanMax, with which Equinix has signed its first power purchase agreement (PPA) in India.

The London Internet Exchange (LINX) announced this week it will be expanding its interconnection footprint in Africa early next year with a new internet exchange point (IXP) in Ghana and its second IXP in Kenya.

UAE-based operator Etisalat by e& and Mauritius-based digital infrastructure provider WIOCC say they have formed a strategic partnership to integrate their subsea networks to accelerate growth of Africa’s hyperscaler ecosystem.

Vietnamese telco Viettel announced on Wednesday it has commercially launched Open RAN 5G on its network using its in-house gNodeB solution developed in partnership with Qualcomm.

Data centre company Open Access Data Centres (OADC) has had a busy few days, most notably with the announcement of the imminent launch of Open Access Fabric (OAfabric), which is described as a truly open-access and collaborative digital platform that promises to redefine African interconnection.

Cirion Technologies, a digital infrastructure and technology provider in Latin America, today announced what it describes as a new, wholly diverse and resilient Atlantic subsea route expanding fibre connectivity between Latin America and North America. It’s called the South American Crossing-2 (SAC-2) Route.

Digital infrastructure platform Empyrion Digital has announced its strategic expansion into Thailand to develop a minimum 12MW (IT load) edge co-location data centre in Bangkok. It’s Empyrion Digital’s first major investment in Southeast Asia following its establishment in Singapore in 2021.

LEO satellite operator Starlink says its satellite broadband service is now available in Chad after the government approved its licence to operate in the country.

Nokia has announced its second fibre broadband partnership in South Africa in as many days – this one with ICT solutions provider Reflex and ISP Net Nine Nine, and also with the aim of expanding broadband access for underserved communities.

ZTE revealed on Tuesday that China Mobile is deploying its AI telco cloud solution within its network to improve energy efficiency and lower opex costs following verification tests in Hunan and Anhui provinces.

Satellite operator Eutelsat Group has entered into a partnership with Clear Blue Technologies, a major name in smart energy solutions, aimed at the African market.

Digital infrastructure and cloud gaming technology company Radian Arc and COMIT, a leading regional provider of telecommunications services and solutions, have announced a partnership that will bring Radian Arc’s complete portfolio of GPU-powered solutions to Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

Technology group Liquid Intelligent Technologies, and South Africa’s Western Cape Government have announced at the Africa Tech Festival 2024 in Cape Town that they have renewed a partnership to continue expanding connectivity in the province.

Industries are rapidly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) as a cornerstone for operations and strategy, creating massive real-time data streams and setting high standards for mobile network performance.

State-controlled telco Telecom Egypt said on Monday it has signed several multi-year agreements worth up to EGP30 billion (US$609.5 million) to provide infrastructure services to Vodafone Egypt to support its preparation for rolling out 5G.

Telekom Malaysia’s wholesale arm TM Global said on Monday it will expand its core data centres in Cyberjaya and Johor  to serve growing demand for domestic and international data hosting services.

Globe Telecom president and CEO Ernest Cu said on Monday that unauthorized transactions that affected some GCash wallet users in the Philippines over the weekend were the result of a glitch, and that no funds were lost.

Dubai-based digital assets infrastructure company Hodler Investments and Chinese clean energy company Golden Concord Group (GCL) have agreed to jointly invest in an off-grid energy infrastructure project in Ethiopia to power data centres that support high-demand applications, including artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain.

Nokia has announced that South African internet service provider Fibertime will deploy Nokia’s fibre solution to rapidly expand broadband access to underserved regions of South Africa.

Digital ecosystem GoTo Group, along with leading cloud company Tencent Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of China’s Alibaba Group, have signed agreements that, they say, will boost cloud infrastructure and digital talent development in Indonesia. All three companies will work closely with the Indonesian government.