Ooredoo Palestine renewed its multi-year partnership with Finnish BSS/OSS vendor Qvantel.

Tencent Cloud is reportedly planning to expand its data centre footprint in the Middle East in a bid to grow its cloud business outside of China.

Oman has launched a national programme to develop and assemble a CubeSat satellite, marking what is described as a step towards building domestic capabilities in satellite manufacturing and space technologies.

Vodafone Business, a division of the country’s leading operator Vodafone Egypt, has announced its entry into Egypt’s agriculture sector, marking what is described as a significant expansion of its enterprise services into one of the country’s most critical economic areas.

Mogo, an Egyptian provider of consumer finance solutions, has announced the signing of a strategic cooperation agreement with Geidea, a Saudi-headquartered premier electronic payments company, to address the Egyptian payment market.

Two very different approaches to powering data centres are making headlines in Dubai and Kazakhstan: one, which has been under way for some time, is solar-focused, the other, very much on the drawing board, may use coal.

Saudi Arabia-headquartered global artificial intelligence company Humain and the National Infrastructure Fund, the Kingdom’s lead development financing partner for infrastructure, have announced a strategic financing framework agreement of up to US$1.2 billion.

Ooredoo Group announced on Tuesday that its digital infrastructure unit Syntys has acquired Qatar-based hyperscale data centre operator Q Data QFZ, which will add another 12.5MW of IT load capacity to Syntys’ data centre offerings in Qatar.

Cyprus-based independent subsea infrastructure provider Datawave Networks said on Monday it has secured a deal with affiliates of investment firm Cerberus Capital Management to fund its long-planned Singapore-India-Gulf (SING) Cable System.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), a multilateral developmental investment bank, and Tunisie Telecom, Tunisia’s national telecom operator, say they are partnering to improve the country’s digital infrastructure and drive the company’s transformation.

Batelco by Beyon announced on Tuesday it has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Bahrain-based Qareeb Data Centers to launch what they claim will be Bahrain’s first edge data centre.

Orange Jordan said on Tuesday it has expanded of its fibre broadband access network to include Tafila and additional areas in Aqaba as part of its commitment to develop Jordan’s digital infrastructure.

A busy start to the week for payments giant Mastercard has included announcements of major deals in Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Omantel announced on Sunday it has successfully and seamlessly upgraded its network to support 5G Standalone (SA) services and boost its ability to support the next wave of digital technologies in Oman.

Aramco Digital, the technology subsidiary of Saudi oil giant Aramco, says it is set to launch the kingdom’s national industrial communications network operating in the 450MHz band.

Oman Data Park (ODP), a managed services and cloud provider delivering ICT solutions, has entered into a strategic partnership with ZainTECH, the integrated digital solutions provider of MEA telecoms giant Zain Group, to strengthen cybersecurity services across Oman and selected regional markets.

Software provider Cerillion has won its largest contract to date after securing a GBP42.5 million (around US$57.1 million) deal with Oman-based operator Omantel.

Egypt’s regulator the NTRA (National Telecom Regulatory Authority) has granted tpay the country’s first licence to offer Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) for government payments.

Ground has been broken on a new data centre for the Saudi Arabian government in Riyadh, described as the world’s largest government data centre.

Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and operator Orange Egypt have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) aimed at expanding the use of telemedicine and delivering integrated, high-quality digital healthcare services to villages and to remote and deprived areas.

Ooredoo, Qatar’s leading ICT provider, and the Gulf Organisation for Research & Development (GORD), a research group with a strong emphasis on sustainability, have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU).

As part of what appears to have been an upbeat overview of the country’s ICT sector the Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology recently highlighted some ambitious plans for local phone production.

Ooredoo Qatar has launched a new eSIM solution for IoT devices, which it says can help enterprises simplify device management, enhance security, and scale IoT operations across borders.

e& UAE says its EMIX IP transit platform has upgraded its UAE core with 400G links in collaboration with Cisco to meet demands for traffic growth that is growing over 20% annually.

PayTabs Kuwait, a member of the Saudi Arabia-headquartered PayTabs Group, which specialises in payment orchestration, has announced that it has entered a strategic partnership with BEDE Kuwait, a payment services company.

In what is described as a first for the EEMEA region, First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) and payment giant Mastercard have officially launched Mastercard’s proprietary mobile-first virtual card number (VCN) solution for businesses.

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of Bahrain has announced the launch of satellite direct-to-device (D2D) services in the country, although ‘launch’ may mean ‘authorisation’ in this case.

Ericsson and Zain Bahrain announced on Monday they have expanded their strategic partnership to include Ericsson’s 5G Edge User Plane technology, which Zain will deploy to enable Industry 4.0 technologies in Bahrain’s industrial sector.

The challenge of keeping businesses safe from cyberthreats is yet again in the news, this time in Qatar, where a leading telecommunications and ICT provider has announced a cybersecurity deal.

Bahrain-headquartered provider telecommunications and digital services Batelco by Beyon has signed an agreement with Cisco to modernise its IP backbone infrastructure.

Payments giant Mastercard say it has partnered with MoneyHash, a payment orchestration platform built for emerging and global markets, to expand merchant access to the newly launched Merchant Cloud across the Middle East and Africa.

Saudi Arabian telco stc group announced on Thursday that it has formed a a strategic joint venture partnership with Humain, a Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund (PIF)-owned AI company, to build AI data centres in the country.