Indian telecom equipment manufacturer HFCL (formerly Himachal Futuristic Communications Limited) has been recognised as the ‘Trusted Source’ by the National Security Council Secretariat (Trusted Telecom Cell), a part of the National Security Council, who advises the Prime Minister’s Office on matters of national security and strategic interest.

Russia's active mobile subscriber base totaled 259 million this year (2021), up by 3.3% from the year before but slightly off from the 260 million recorded at the end of 2019, said a study.

Veon Group has announced that its Russian operator Beeline is set to partner with Yandex.Plus for the launch of their first joint tariff plan.

Eritrea’s telecom sector operates under a state-owned monopoly for fixed and mobile services. Partly as a result of such restrictions on competition, the country has the least developed telecommunications market in Africa.

The slow process to open up Ethiopia’s telecom market was completed with the licensing of the Safaricom-led Global Partnership for Ethiopia consortium. The country had been one of the last in Africa to allow its national telco a monopoly on all telecom services including fixed, mobile, internet and data communications.

The combined telecommunications industrial revenue in China rose 8.1 percent year on year to over 1.35 trillion yuan (about 212 billion U.S. dollars) in the January-November period, registering robust growth.

India's first 5G technology trials for rural broadband began at Ajol village in the state of Gujarat with a base transceiver station (BTS) installed 17km away at Unava town in the Gandhinagar district.

China Telecom’s US unit China Telecom Americas (CTA)announced that it plans to continue providing some services in the US in 2022 after a regulator revoked its authorisation to operate telecommunications in the country, citing espionage concerns.

During the last few years Libya has struggled to rebuild its economy and infrastructure following disruption caused by the civil war and the subsequent political unrest. Much of the telecom infrastructure was destroyed or stolen following the 2011 disturbances, including about a quarter of the country’s mobile tower sites.

For many years Oman’s mobile market was a duopoly between the incumbent telco Omantel and its challenger Ooredoo Oman. In February 2021, Vodafone Group and Oman Future Telecommunications consortium secured a license to operate the Sultanate’s third network, with services being under the Vodafone Oman brand. The new operator has been able to extend its reach based on a tower leasing arrangement signed in 2020 with Oman Tower Company.

Kuwaiti mobile telecommunications company Zain Kuwait said its 5G traffic accounts for more than 40 percent of its total wireless traffic.

ZTE Corporation announced that it has received two No. 1 rankings in research firm Dell’Oro Group’s recently released Broadband Access & Home Networking Quarterly Report 3Q21.

Eros Now, an over-the-top (OTT) South Asian entertainment platform owned by Eros STX Global Corporation, has announced a partnership with Global Networks Infocomm (GNIPL) for expanding its reach in India.

Fixed-line teledensity in Papua New Guinea has seen little change over the past two decades.

Fiji has a relatively sophisticated communications infrastructure with the highest mobile and internet penetration in the Pacific Islands. It is the leading market to watch in terms of both LTE and 5G development in this region.

For many years, GSM was the primary mobile technology for Vanuatu’s 300,000 people. Recent infrastructure projects have improved access technologies, with a transition to 3G and, to a limited degree, to LTE.

Samoa was one of the first Pacific Island countries to establish a regulatory infrastructure and to liberalise its telecom market. In 2006, it became the first in the region to see the market entrance of Digicel, which has since launched services in other Pacific nations.

Bharat FIH, formerly Rising Stars Mobile India, a subsidiary of FIH Mobiles, a Foxconn Technology Group Company, has filed for an initial public offering of up to INR 50.04 billion ($662.97 million).

ZTE Corporation together with the Sichuan Branch of China Mobile and Dahantricom Corporation has officially rolled out “Panda’s Coming”, the 5G Messaging application.

Russian integrated provider of digital services and solutions Rostelecom has acquired 100% of the share capital of TVE-Telecom for RUB 1.7 billion (GBP 17 million).

China's internet regulator, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), has temporarily suspended a partnership with Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, for six months.

Qatari multinational telecommunications company Ooredoo Group has selected US-based cybersecurity company Fortinet to improve its Enterprise EDGE portfolio based on the Fortinet Secure SD-WAN. 

Indian operators and network technology providers apparently want an extension of the deadline for responses to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) consultation paper on the sale of 5G spectrum.

Argentina's Camara de Cooperativas de Telecomunicaciones (Chamber of Telecommunications Cooperatives, or Catel) has announced that Imowi, its MVNO service, will launch on 20 January 2022.

China Mobile, the world's largest mobile network operator, aims to raise as much as 56 billion yuan (GBP6.7bn, USD $8.8 billion) when it lists its shares in Shanghai following the country's biggest public offering in a decade.

Indosat Oordeoo, a telecommunications provider in Indonesia, prepares a network capacity of 44 PB per day to meet the needs of the community’s digital activity which is predicted to increase during Christmas and New Year (Nataru) holidays.

Indian telecom operator Vodafone-idea (Vi) has launched a new service wherein users will get the opportunity to get customised/VIP/ special phone numbers delivered at their doorstep. The service, however, is currently activated in select cities only.

Dito Telecommunity Corporation, a telecommunications company in the Philippines, said that it hit its target of five million subscriptions before the end of 2021, and reported revenues of PHP2 billion (USD40.1 million) in the nine months since its commercial launch back in March.

Arab National Bank (ANB), a leading banking institution in Saudi Arabia, is adopting open hybrid cloud platforms from Red Hat, a provider of open source solutions, to accelerate digital banking innovation.

Apple is bringing iPhone 13 production to the vast Indian market, with commercial production planned for early next year.

Israeli telecommunications provider Bezeq has announced that the Bezeq Group, through Bezeq International, has signed a memorandum of understanding for the purchase of 70 percent of the shares of the cloud computing company, CloudEdge, from its controlling shareholder, Softwatch.

National regulator the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has determined a new international termination rate (ITR) for voice services paid by overseas telecom carriers for terminating international calls on local networks in Nigeria. It is to be set at $0.045.

State-owned telco Thai National Telecom (NT), Thai MVNO The WhiteSpace (The WSP), power management and electronic components specialist Delta Electronics (Thailand) PCL and Taiwan service provider Chunghwa Telecom have announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for collaboration in a 5G private network.

A proposed subsea internet cable that would be designed to connect Chile and Australia came closer this week with the appointment by the Chilean government of a partner in the project.