In the first nine months of 2011, Belarus’ mobile market grew by 4.5%, with the number of mobile customers surpassing 11mn in September. By the end of 2011, it is estimated there were 11.18mn mobile subscribers in Belarus, growth of 5.9% over the year and a mobile penetration rate of almost 117%...

A new agreement will extend an international top up service for China across the world, allowing Chinese living abroad to recharge the credit of their relatives in their homeland...

 There was a significant surge in mobile subscriptions in Kuwait during Q211...

Mobile users across Africa and the Middle East will be able to access Wikipedia via their devices without incurring data usage charges, via a new partnership...

Uncertainty pervades all four North African states – and, by extension, their telecom sectors...

Three Chinese banks have come to the rescue of the debt-ridden Indian operator Reliance Communications (RCom)...

What comes to mind when you think about cloud security? Do you think about application security or protecting corporate data? Perhaps you fear virus or phishing attacks? For the past several years, cloud security has been one of the biggest concerns among IT decision makers as they consider how best to transition applications and data out of the corporate data center and into the cloud. The real question is one of perception versus reality...

A new communications service for disaster relief has been successfully deployed in full operational field service for the first time...

 Consumer and business customers in China will soon have access to services based on Serve, a next-generation commerce technology...

Ghana's mobile sector will have 27.281mn mobile subscribers by 2016, up from 21.518mn at the end of 2011...

A new superfast submarine cable link has been launched between Israel and Italy...

The Indian Supreme Court has rejected the Indian government’s claim that Vodafone Group owed $2.2 billion in taxes, stating that the British firm “had no liability to account for withholding tax on its acquisition of interests in Hutchison Essar Limited (now Vodafone India Limited) in 2007"...

The highly-developed UAE telecom sector was rocked this year by the arrival of LTE, introduced by number one operator Etisalat – but competition is already snapping at its heels...

After introducing cloud-based services in 2011, the leading enterprise services provider in the Caribbean is now expanding its suite to target small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the region...

As one of the largest growth markets in the world, it is unsurprising that forecasts for China’s telecoms sector are being revised upwards...

 A major satellite communications provider in Africa has signed a new partnership with a major teleport services provider to expand operations and service delivery in the African and Middle East markets...

 Iran’s increasing mobile penetration is somewhat tempered by a probable base of inactive subscribers, as well as a looming decline in ARPU levels...

 The ongoing volatility of copper pricing has created a major concern for the telecommunications industry, in which telecoms operators traditionally use copper ground wire for network grounding and bonding. Rising copper prices negatively impact operating costs by increasing the price of wire and maintenance costs, as copper wire becomes an attractive target for thieves intent on stealing it for sale to recyclers, particularly in emerging markets...

A leading Thai mobile operator is updating its provisioning and activation software...

Customers of Russia’s leading operator will soon enjoy new services, faster, more reliable connections and improved coverage with better network performance...

Israel boasts one of the few markets in the Middle East with strong competition across all market sectors...

A major Bangladeshi cellular service provider has launched a mobile insurance premium collection service...

With Bahrain’s mobile market approaching saturation, the growth in the second quarter of 2011 was unexpected but is unlikely to stop...

To start off the new year, we here at Developing Telecoms thought it would be interesting to take stock of the market and identify what the top telecom trends in emerging markets will be during 2012. We decided that the best way of doing this would be to ask the people who really know: top executives at network operators, services providers and equipment vendors who work in the market and are experiencing developments first hand...

Sustainable energy has emerged as an important corporate agenda point and many organisations today communicate their efforts in strategic marketing campaigns. These campaigns bring across the importance of sustainability efforts and how this will make a difference...

The ongoing disagreement over the ownership of Algeria’s market leading operator Djezzy could soon come to a close, following the announcement that the country’s government is to become a majority stakeholder in the firm...

Growth has been steady in Pakistan although there have been setbacks to the country’s 3G licensing process which is due to take place this year...

Home to one of the world’s most isolated cities, the fabled Timbuctu, and with a generally challenging geography for the provision of telecommunication services, Mali has market penetration rates below African averages in all market sectors except mobile where it is now racing towards the 100% mark..

 As a result of heavy investments in the telecom sector since the mid-1990s, Tunisia has one of the most developed telecommunications infrastructures in Northern Africa and sports some of the continent’s highest market penetration rates...

With the demand for data exploding across developed and emerging markets, operators need to find ways of facilitating delivery while keeping costs down. Content Delivery Networks are emerging as a viable means of doing this; with a correctly installed CDN, operators are able to increase access bandwidth in order to provide faster access to cached data...

 Residential and business customers in Saudi Arabia will soon have access to fixed broadband services using Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology via a nationwide fibre network...

Low penetration in Tanzania leaves plenty of room for growth over the next five years, but operators need to capitalise on the rural market potential...

Adding its voice to the debate over Indian 3G roaming agreements, the state-owned operator BSNL has claimed that the spectrum-sharing alliances between private operators across the country are “illegal”...

Throughout 2011 the societal and political unrest in many Arab countries, termed the Arab Spring, fundamentally changed the progress and pace at which telecommunications infrastructure has, and will continue to be, developed in these countries...