Ciena said on Wednesday that digital infrastructure and technology provider Cirion Technologies will deploy its solutions on subsea and terrestrial cable routes to enable its Latin American data centres to support growing demand for cloud and AI.

Only days after making news in Indonesia, telecom and fibre consulting firm APTelecom is back in the headlines, this time in Malaysia, with an appointment to support another submarine cable project.

Saudi Arabian digital enabler, stc Group, through its AI arm, stc.AI, says it has launched a large language model (LLM) sovereign cloud platform, which will, it claims, run the world’s largest open-source frontier model.

Space42, the UAE-based AI-powered spacetech company, has announced a strategic collaboration with FADA, an entity that is part of UAE’s EDGE, a technology company established to develop the UAE’s sovereign geospatial analytics capabilities, to significantly advance the UAE’s Earth observation (EO) downstream capabilities.

Etihad Salam Telecom Company, a provider of telecommunications services in Saudi Arabia, has announced a number of partnerships in recent days, including agreements with EdgeNext, a prominent leader in the global edge cloud services industry, and with call centre solutions provider Genesys.

UAE-based telco du said on Monday it has signed a partnership deal with PEACE Cable International Network Co Limited to extend the PEACE subsea cable system into the UAE and Gulf region.

Thailand’s Digital Economy and Society (DES) Ministry is reportedly planning to crack down on scammers using LEO satellite services like Starlink to provide connectivity for their operations.

Indian telco Bharti Airtel said on Monday that it has landed the SEA-ME-WE 6 subsea cable in Chennai, two months after establising the cable system's first Indian landing point in Mumbai.

Africa for Information Technology and Aviation (AITA), which specialises in aviation IT solutions, has announced a strategic partnership with Arabia SKYFive, which provides broadband connectivity  for aircraft, to provide high-speed in-flight connectivity (IFC) services for airlines in Egypt.

Multinational telecommunications company Telefonica has announced plans to start insolvency proceedings for its Peruvian subsidiary, Telefonica del Peru. Essentially, according to many reports, this is a strategic move to restructure its Peru unit by filing for bankruptcy protection.

Orange Jordan has upgraded its Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) with Nokia’s 7750 Service Router (SR) platforms.

Amid public backlash, MTN Nigeria has reversed course on a move to increase the price of its 15GB data plan by 200% and issued an apology to customers, saying the tariff hike was a “mistake”.

Ciena says that Indian ISP Tejays Dynamics is using its coherent routing solutions to build an adaptive IP network that will serve the connectivity needs of its enterprise and campus customers.

Orange Tunisia, Ooredoo Tunisia and Tunisie Telecom all launched their respective 5G mobile services late last week, less than three months after receiving their 5G licenses.

Telecom Argentina says it has taken a new step in its sustainability and energy transition strategy with an agreement signed with power company MSU Green Energy for the supply of 60,000 MWh of solar energy per year for the next ten years.

Multinational technology conglomerate Meta has formally announced what it calls its most ambitious subsea cable endeavour yet: Project Waterworth, which will reach five major continents and span over 50,000 kilometres, making it the world’s longest subsea cable project. It will, says Meta, use the highest-capacity technology available.

Cambodian operator CamGSM, commercially known as Cellcard, is planning to migrate its fibre network from gigabit passive optical network (GPON) to 10 gigabit symmetric passive optical network (XGS-PON) using Nokia’s Lightspan and Altiplano broadband solutions.

Telefónica is reportedly accelerating its exit from non-core markets by preparing to sell its Mexico unit, just weeks after it was said to be exploring sales in Argentina and Colombia.

Nokia announced on Thursday that it has signed a deal with Ooredoo Qatar to modernize its core network to support standalone 5G, which in turn will boost the telco's ability to deliver more advanced services.

Qatar-based telco Ooredoo Group announced on Thursday that US information management services company Iron Mountain has agreed to take a minority equity stake in Ooredoo’s carrier-neutral data centre company, MENA Digital Hub.

Alibaba Cloud announced on Thursday it has launched its second data centre in Thailand to increase its local capacity and launch an enhanced portfolio of services aimed at select verticals, with a particular focus on generative AI apps.

Indonesian operator Super Sistem, which is developing the Indonesian Barat Timur Indonesia (BTI) submarine cable system, has appointed consulting firm APTelecom to engage prospective customers on its behalf to undertake presales for the system.

Payment giant Mastercard has officially announced the launch of TRACE (Trace Financial Crime) in the Asia Pacific region. Described as a sophisticated network-level solution that harnesses artificial intelligence to identify and prevent money laundering and financial crime, it has begun its rollout in the Philippines.

MTN South Africa reportedly plans to shut down its 3G mobile network by the end of this year – a full year earlier than initially planned – following a successful pilot project in Cape Town to migrate 3G users to 4G and 5G.

Cameroon-based cloud services provider ST Digital has launched GPU Cloud Africa, a GPU-as-a-service (GPUaaS) offering that aims to provide African businesses and institutions with access to Nvidia GPUs to develop AI applications.

Nokia announced on Thursday that it has signed a deal with Cambodian telco CamGSM – a.k.a. Cellcard – to migrate its fibre access network from GPON to XGS-PON, which could boost speeds for its broadband customers as high as 10 Gbps.

AirTrunk, an Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) hyperscale data centre specialist, has announced plans to develop its second cloud and AI-ready data centre in Malaysia.

Tawal, a leading Saudi telecommunications and IT infrastructure company, has entered into a strategic agreement with Saudi Entertainment Ventures (SEVEN), part of Qiddiya Investment Company (QIC), a wholly owned Public Investment Fund (PIF) entity that develops and operates entertainment destinations.

India's second biggest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, has awarded a contract to tech giants Nokia and Qualcomm focusing on the expansion of 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) and Wi-Fi solutions to facilitate high-speed internet access to millions across India.

Aramco, the giant Saudi Arabian integrated energy and chemical company, has been in the telecoms news recently after the announcement of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with AMD and handset innovation with Qualcomm.

5G private networks continue to make waves in a number of markets, this time in Slovenia, with the news that Kontron, a provider of mission-critical communication solutions, and operator Telekom Slovenije have launched the first commercial standalone (SA) 5G private network in the country.