Ukraine’s market leader Kyivstar will begin rolling out LTE-900 upgrades from April, after being issued a licence for the technology earlier this month.

Venezuela’s sole telecoms satellite has ceased functioning three years before it was due to.

India’s government, regulator, and other industry stakeholders have put forward new measures aimed at helping the country’s telecommunications sector adapt to the Covid-19 pandemic.

If there was ever a time when remote education was more than just an interesting concept, this is it. For example, the government of Bahrain has said that 140,000 students are now benefiting from remote learning in the kingdom.

According to local news reports in the Gulf region, the leading UAE operator Etisalat has expanded its CloudTalk Meeting platform. It will now enable up to 50 simultaneous participants at any one time.

MTS is continuing its cooperation with Ericsson as it looks to modernise its network infrastructure in preparation for the advent of 5G.

The report extension requested by Indian operators, which we highlighted last week, has now been granted.

While Indian operators are requesting more spectrum from the government, in South Africa it seems the government is proving a little more proactive.

With their 3G licences set to expire on 31st March, the government of Romania has made a last minute decision to allow the local units of Orange and Vodafone to extend them.

A three-month moratorium on bank term loans and working capital finance offered by the Reserve Bank of India in response to the Coronavirus pandemic could prove especially useful to the country’s telecommunications sector.

Further evidence of the growing reliance on telecommunications during the Coronavirus pandemic comes from Bangladesh, where local news reports suggest that internet usage has shot up 15 per cent.

MTN Benin is expanding its existing agreement with Ericsson to include network services based around analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation.

Mexican regulator IFT (Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones) could postpone the country’s upcoming auction of 5G-ready 600MHz spectrum in light of the Covid-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.

The Kenya-based Regional Centre for Mapping of Development Resources (RCMRD), which focuses on mapping, remote sensing and related fields in Africa, has launched a web application dedicated to monitoring the spread of Coronavirus across the centre’s 20 member states in Africa.

Having deactivated all of the network equipment that it operated outside of Kiev, Ukrtelecom’s mobile unit TriMob is now auctioning its disused infrastructure.

Madagascan operator Telecom Malagasy (Telma) has completed an upgrade to its LTE network allowing it to deliver 4G+ (LTE-A) across the country.

Russia’s Rostelecom is acquiring the 55% stake in Tele2 Russia that it did not already hold, meaning that it now holds 100% of shares in the unit.

Zain Bahrain has renewed its partnership with local start-up platform StartUp Bahrain to help push innovation in the telecom and fintech sectors.

According to recent reports in the UK’s Financial Times newspaper the multibillion-dollar stake in India’s Reliance Jio that Facebook allegedly intends to buy could be delayed.

India isn’t the only part of Asia where operators are moving quickly to accommodate stay-at-home end users during the Coronavirus outbreak, as Pakistan’s Ufone has just proved.

As we suggested yesterday, fast growth in Indian data usage has started to put pressure on mobile networks.

Ukrtelecom will deploy a rural GPON fibre optic network via a new agreement with Iskratel and SID Bank of Slovenia.

Konnect Africa, a subsidiary of satellite operator Eutelsat Communications, along with educational platform Schoolap and financial messaging network Flash Services, is planning to bring high-speed internet connectivity to Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) schools.

Loon, a subsidiary of Alphabet that offers a novel approach to internet connectivity, has announced that its internet balloons have been approved to fly in Kenya.

The NGOF has announced new unified criteria for the provision of private line networks, products and services to help network operators expand their B2B services.

Emirates-headquartered operator Etisalat has announced the launch of Business Edge, a comprehensive platform offering a wide range of services and solutions that cater to small and medium-sized enterprises.

Jamaica’s Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has charged several executives from the now-defunct startup Symbiote Investment (Caricel) for breaching the country’s Telecommunications Act.

India’s big three operators are bracing themselves for a jump in data traffic as work-from-home initiatives gain traction across the country.

A welcome piece of positive news for Africa comes from the Sri Lanka-headquartered International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and a new satellite data initiative.

Russia’s spectrum authority has granted MegaFon and Rostelecom access to 5G-capable spectrum in order to conduct joint trials of the technology.