Qatar Free Zones Authority (QFZA), the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MOTC), and Google Cloud announced yesterday bolstering their strategic partnership to include establishing a new Center of Excellence training facility and new Google office in the State of Qatar.

The decision by the government of Pakistan to introduce tax on mobile phone calls has occasioned quite a lot of coverage – and comment – from local media.

Indosat Ooredoo has partnered with Cisco for Southeast Asia’s first commercial deployment of segment routing over IPv6 (SRv6) to support the development of its 5G services across Indonesia.

Vodafone Turkey and Nokia have successfully completed a trial of the first intercontinental 1T (terabit) clear-channel IP interface linking Asia and Europe.

Riding on a wave of the growth in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) subscriptions, the total fixed broadband service revenue in Malaysia is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.1% from US$1.6bn in 2020 to US$2.5bn in 2025, said a study.

The adoption of fifth-generation (5G) mobile services will be uneven across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region but the four pioneer markets, which include (South) Korea and China, will maintain their lead in the adoption of 5G services, said a report.

The telecommunications and media company Millicom which provides cable and mobile services in Latin America under the Tigo brand has announced the launch of ONEtv on Android TV (Google) in the markets where it operates in the region.

United Group's Android TV platform EON has made its debut in Croatia. EON is provided by Austrian-based Solford Alpine and users can subscribe online or through Telemach Croatia sales channels.

Mozambique’s Tmcel (Mocambique Telecom) has signed a US$23 million 4G expansion deal with Huawei that will also see the operator preparing for the advent of 5G services.

Given the steady decline in mobile voice and mobile messaging service revenues, Malaysia’s mobile service revenue is expected to grow at a negligible compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 0.7% from US$5bn in 2020 to US$5.2bn in 2025, said a study.

PPF Telecom Group, a strategic PPF Group vehicle used to consolidate investments in telecommunications, has increased its stake in the telecommunications provider O2 Czech Republic (Czechia) and now wants to take the firm private.

Google deepened its partnership with Reliance Jio with an "ultra-low-cost smartphone" smartphone that could connect hundreds of millions of customers to high-speed mobile data.

Ethiopian telecommunication company Ethio Telecom is partnering with Ericsson to expand its 4G services into the South West region of Ethiopia during 2021.

There have been a number of interesting recent telecoms-related announcements from Colombia, where 5G, remote connectivity and satcoms for humanitarian purposes are all in the news.

Following a number of announcements from other parts of West Africa, Senegal is the latest country in the region to make headlines in the data centre world with the official announcement of plans to migrate all government data and applications to a new government data centre.

The African Telecommunications Union (ATU) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Huawei that will see African countries and organizations build capacity for ICT transformation.

Indian tech companies have submitted bids to participate in state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL)’s proof of concept (POC) exercise to test indigenously developed 4G core and radio equipment and solutions.

Indian telecom operator Vodafone Idea (Vi) will collaborate with Cisco to improve its existing 4G network and, in the future, 5G use cases for offering better quality expe­rience for its customers.

Azerbaijan’s largest mobile network operator by subscribers Azercell has distributed more than 100,000 4G LTE SIMs as part of an upgrade campaign launched in October last year.

India does not want to miss the 6G bus. The Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI) Wednesday said it submitted its 6G vision with the ITU Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) to drive the direction of 6G technologies as part of the vision for IMT-2030.

A multi-year distribution agreement to extend high-speed network connectivity to South Africa has been confirmed  after satellite operator Eutelsat Communications and infrastructure provider and telecommunications company Vox signed a distribution agreement for Eutelsat Konnect capacity over South Africa.

It looks like some measure of privatisation is finally going to be applied to the state-owned operator Angola Telecom by the Angolan government.

Vivo, the Brazilian subsidiary of Telefónica Group, has selected Netcracker Technology for the next stage in its ongoing digital transformation program.

Indosat Ooredoo announced the launch of its 5G services in the city of Solo (city of Surakarta) in Java, Indonesia. Huawei is the 5G network supplier for Indosat Ooredoo.

Hong Kong-headquartered Big Data Exchange (BDx) has opened the first phase of its 35MW NKG Data Center Campus in Nanjing, China.

Israel's Minister of Communications, Yoaz Hendel, has confirmed that Israel is to abolish the split it imposed between infrastructure providers and internet service suppliers.

Carrier-neutral data centre provider MainOne has announced the imminent launch of its new data centre in Appolonia City, Accra.

Telecommunications giant MTN is continuing to pursue some very ambitious plans for Africa. Its latest commitment is to expand broadband access across Nigeria.

Global web innovator Opera has suspended support for VPN services in browsers on Russian territory after Roskomnadzor, Russia's telecommunications watchdog, banned the use of Opera VPN and another service called VyprVPN, having classified them as threats according to current Russian law.

With the granting by the country’s ICT Authority (ICTA) of 5G licences to three mobile operators, Mauritius is the latest African country to take a step towards launching 5G – but it has done so in a slightly different way.