Telenor’s planned sale of its 51 percent stake in Myanmar's Wave Money, a digital payment service provider, for $53 million to a subsidiary of Yoma Strategic, mentioned in these pages in early January, is finally going through.

Cambodian ISP and A2P messaging aggregator MekongNet has partnered with mobile identity solutions provider IPification to deliver seamless mobile data authentication services in Cambodia.

Cabo Verde Telecom (CVT) has signed a new 20-year concession to continue delivering telecommunications services in Cape Verde.

Orange has signed an EaaS (Energy as a Service) contract with Engie to convert its main African data centre to solar power.

Nepali operator Smart Telecom has missed the mid-January deadline for paying its outstanding dues of NPR5.5 billion (US$45.8 million), leaving the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) with little choice but to revoke its licence.

The Government of India has issued guidelines to immediately address the issues related to the installation of mobile phone towers in and nearby airports.

Romanian cloud service provider ClusterPower has laid out $43 million to start building a data centre campus near the southern city of Craiova.

China's ZTE Corporation and China Unicom have jointly completed the Proof of Concept (PoC) of computing power network service scheduling.

Pakistan’s state-backed operators are collaborating to develop telecommunications services in the country’s Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit Baltistan (GB) regions.

Uruguay’s Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining confirmed that the long-awaited launch of mobile number portability officially came into force on 12^th January.

There’s been no let-up in 5G activity lately, with Zambia’s MTN announcing the country’s first 5G launch and Telia highlighting a dynamic spectrum sharing-based 5G launch now underway in Lithuania.

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) has launched the DEWA-SAT 1 nanosatellite in collaboration with NanoAvionics, becoming the world’s first utility to use nanosatellites to improve the maintenance and planning of electricity and water networks.

Indian telecom operator Vodafone Idea (Vi) has revamped its national backbone network with US-based telecom equipment maker Ciena, to prepare for fifth-generation or 5G network rollout.

Tizeti Network, West Africa’s pioneer solar-based internet service provider, is launching its high-speed 4G LTE network in Oyo State, South-West Nigeria.

Diyar Al Muharraq, one of the largest real estate development companies in the Kingdom of Bahrain, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Telecom Company-owned operator stc Bahrain, to construct and operate additional telecommunication towers.

India’s three largest mobile operators have called on the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to slash the reserve price of 3.5GHz spectrum in its upcoming auctions.

Global colocation provider Telehouse is expanding its footprint in the Southeast Asian market, revealing plans to open a new data centre facility in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok.

Telefonica Colombia, the largest telecommunications company in Colombia, has closed the sale of its fibre to the home (FTTH) assets in the country to American venture capital giant KKR for a total of around EUR 175 million after receiving the corresponding regulatory clearance.

Hutchison Telecommunications Lanka (Private) Limited and its infrastructure partner edotco Services Lanka (Private) Limited (edotco) have launched an Open-RAN trial, to further reduce the cost of GB data and thereby passing the cost-benefit to its customers.

Gulf Bridge International (GBI), a global cloud, connectivity and content enabler whose multilayer terrestrial and subsea cable meshed network bridges the East to the West through the Middle East, is deploying Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme, powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme, to increase its smart network capacity and performance.

India’s RailTel, a central government PSU (public sector undertaking), has announced plans to work with a number of partners to create edge data centres at railway premises across 102 locations in India.

Vodafone Idea CEO Ravinder Takkar has stated that the operator’s current management will retain full control of the business despite yesterday’s announcement of the Indian government taking a majority holding in the operator.

Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Information, known locally as KemKominfo, has clarified that it is reviewing plans for a phased shutdown of 3G services in the country.

Transformation solutions provider Nexign has successfully replaced the BSS system for Uzbekistani mobile operator Ucell.

Zain Jordan has selected a suite of products from Infovista to help it modernise its network.

Russian telecommunication holding company ER-Telecom, in cooperation with the state-owned corporation Rostec, has acquired a 75 percent stake minus one share in the company Akado Holding, running the regional operator Akado Telecom. The minority stake will be held by the company AVK Investments.

Turkish operator Turkcell is seeking strategic foreign partnerships for its subsidiaries, CEO Murat Erkan said.

Smart Communications, the mobile arm of Filipino telco PLDT Inc., is teaming up with South Korea’s Samsung Electronics to accelerate the deployment of 5G Standalone (5G SA) technology in the Philippines.

Mobile operator Entel Peru has got together with network intelligence and security-as-a-service (SECaaS) solutions provider Allot to protect mobile network users from cyberattacks.

Arsat, Argentina’s state-owned satellite company, is to run a 289 million peso (about $2.8 million) project to provide connectivity for free internet access in towns across the country.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has ordered another investigation into Google following complaints that the firm had violated antitrust laws.