Georgia’s telecom sector has been attempting for many years to overcome the decades of under-investment in its fixed-line infrastructure during the Soviet era. Concerted efforts to privatise state-owned enterprises and open up the telecom market have been mostly successful, with a large number of operators now competing in both the fixed-line and the mobile segments.

Fuelled by the rapid adoption of digital infrastructure amid the pandemic, rising digital usage, cloud consumption, and ensuing 5G rollout, India's data centre industry is poised for a boom.

The Chilean Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications (MTT) has confirmed that it has completed the deployment of its 247 kilometres long Southern Fibre Optic (Fibra Optica Austral, FOA) rollout, delivering connectivity to more than 536,000 users in 15 districts of the southern zone of Chile.

South African mobile communications company Vodacom Group said that it invested over ZAR 1 billion (USD 70 million) in the last financial year to enable connectivity for rural and urban communities in the Western Cape.

Hispasat, the Spanish operator and satellite solutions and services provider, has been involved in two very different deals recently, covering education and OTT video.

Global internet backbone provider Arelion has announced two deals in the Latin American market, where it has expanded its network in Mexico with help from data centre operator KIO Networks and also partnered with Gold Data, a leading Latin American network provider, to expand its reach in both Mexico and other parts of Latin America.

Nokia’s annual Mobile Broadband Index (MBiT) report for 2022 showed that India has one of the world’s highest data usage rates, with a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 53% over the last five years.

Facebook and WhatsApp owner Meta Platforms has been referred to a tribunal by South Africa’s competition watchdog over allegations that it has exploited its market dominance.

A war of words seems to have begun between Angola’s mobile market leader Unitel and new entrant Africell Angola over infrastructure sharing.

Cambodian telecommunications operator Smart Axiata has chosen enterprise data cloud company Cloudera to help it to accelerate its business performance.

To date, Djibouti remains one of the last bastions where the national telco has a monopoly on all telecom services, including fixed lines, mobile, internet, and broadband. The lack of competition to Djibouti Telecom for such services has meant that the market has not lived up to its potential.

Egypt’s large telecom market is supported by a population of about 103 million and benefits from effective competition in most sectors. A liberal regulatory regime allows for unified licenses which permit operators to offer fixed-line as well as mobile services.

Sudan emerged as a poorer country when South Sudan separated from it in 2011. Although Sudan has about four times the population of South Sudan, the latter benefits from its control of the majority of known oil reserves.

China aims to build more 5G base stations in 2022 to bring the total number to over two million for the further development of the 5G network, said Minister of the Industry and Information Technology Xiao Yaqing.

Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company Ericsson along with the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (ITT Kanpur), and Bharti Airtel, is collaborating with the Rajasthan Pollution Control Board to deploy Narrow Board IoT sensors to measure air pollution in the city of Jaipur, India.

Nokia said that the Chilean conglomerate Antofagasta Minerals (Grupo Antofagasta Minerals) has completed the deployment of an industrial-grade private LTE network to provide secure and reliable support to its Minera Centinela operation.

Malaysia plans to make a final decision on its 5G network this week, according to the communications minister Annuar Musa.

There has been some good news and a legal setback in the past couple of days for Indian operator Vodafone Idea. It has announced a foray into the lucrative gaming market but lost a court case relating to interim relief on a financial penalty.

Continuing what has been a very eventful period for the satellite operator, Intelsat has announced a partnership with the leading Kenyan operator Safaricom to expand LTE coverage in the country.

Orange Group is asking for a discount of €24 million from its acquisition of Telekom Romania Communications (TKR) shares from Greek operator OTE, months after completing the €265 million deal

South African regulator ICASA has stated that the main stage of its ongoing mobile broadband spectrum auction has already exceeded its initial estimate of ZAR8 billion (US$531 million).

Gabon remains one of the wealthiest nations in Africa in terms of GDP per capita, with the economy largely buttressed by oil revenue.

Gambia’s telecom market is dominated by the incumbent telco Gamtel, which retains a monopoly on fixed-line telephony services. There are five mobile network operators providing effective competition, though Giraffe Telecom was only licensed in January 2022 and is yet to be assigned spectrum.

Senegal’s telecom market continues to show steady growth in all sectors. This has been supported by the particular demands made on consumers during the pandemic, which resulted in a particularly strong increase in the number of subscribers.

Safaricom, the newest telecom operator in Ethiopia, has signed a five-year lease agreement with state-owned power utility Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) to share dark fibre-optic infrastructure in the Horn of African nation, the first infrastructure deal with Ethiopia.

Sri Lankan telecommunications service provider Dialog Axiata has laid claim to being the first company in South Asia to successfully trial standalone 5G (5G SA) networks.

Indian communications minister Ashwini Vaishnaw (pictured, right) said that India should take the lead in 6G technology.

Colt Technology Services, a provider of network and voice connectivity to businesses in Europe, Asia and the US, has announced that it is enhancing the reach of its Polish metropolitan area networks (MANs) in six cities across Poland: Katowice, Wroclaw, Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk and Poznan.

The Indian government has ruled operators must streamline the process to port over phone numbers regardless of their tariff plan.