Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Informatics, known locally as KemKominfo, has confirmed that talks are underway regarding a merger of operators XL Axiata and Smartfren.

Leading Indian operator Reliance Jio has now launched its long-promised 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) service. It’s called JioAirFiber and is coming to eight cities – Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune.

Gambia’s minister for Communication and Digital Economy has confirmed that the country has secured funding for a second submarine cable, as part of the WADI project funded by the World Bank.

Today’s second story from Bahrain takes us from the sky to the sea with the news that telecommunications solutions provider Batelco has selected SubCom, which engineers, manufactures, and installs subsea fibre optic data cables, to build and install a regional subsea cable.

The nationwide 100/200G DWDM backbone network currently being deployed by the National Electricity Company of Senegal will be able to offer network capacity by December 2023.

Brazilian regulator Anatel's board of directors has approved a survey that addresses the very high payments made to the public purse by the telecommunications sector. It will be forwarded to the ministries of finance and communications, bodies responsible for studying and proposing legal changes related to the taxation of the sector. 

Two recent agreements, in Bahrain and India, underline the growing importance of the space sector in areas like IoT and the cloud.

Malaysian wholesale 5G provider Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB) will be the first network in Southeast Asia to use Ericsson’s new radio access network (RAN) software solution 5G RedCap, according to the vendor.

Scarcely a day goes by without more developments linked to the ongoing changes in Ethiopia’s mobile communications sector to allow more competition. This time it’s news of a delay relating to the second private telecoms licence – one that will bring a third mobile player into the country.

MTN South Africa has announced a new partnership with Eseye, a global provider of IoT services.

PLDT and its mobile unit Smart Communications have tapped Amdocs to accelerate their cloud modernisation on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

An otherwise uncontroversial recent MoU from Hungary on government and private sector telecoms cooperation nevertheless contained some significant points about taxation policy.

US cloud giants Oracle announced Beyon-owned operator Batelco chose the vendor to upgrade its core IT platforms, in a move to enhance new services and respond to changing market dynamics.

Thai state-owned operator National Telecom (NT) rented RAN gear from AIS to enable its commercial 5G strategy, with the latter tapping into the former's 700MHz spectrum.

What appears to be a stand-off involving operators, the regulator and the country’s finance ministry over spectrum prices looks set to continue in Mexico.

Only days after the operator announced the roll-out of commercial 5G services in Addis Ababa, comes news that Ethio Telecom is planning satellite network upgrades with the help of satellite networking technology, solutions and services company Gilat.

Theft of operator-owned equipment has been in the news in both Botswana and South Africa this week as Botswana Telecommunications Corporation’s (BTC) deals with copper theft and Vodacom with battery theft.

The Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (CRAN) admitted it is facing major hurdles in registering subscribers before its deadline, as only 29% have been signed up.