Airtel Africa acquired spectrum to expand its 4G network in the Democratic Republic of Congo to support growing data demand in the country.

Following last week’s report that ExpressVPN has decided to remove its servers from India, a second VPN provider, Surfshark, has also shut down its physical servers in the country.

The Posts and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) has announced plans to monitor telecommunications traffic for revenue assurance purposes, suggesting that the existing system, whereby operators declare their revenues, may no longer be adequate.

Africa Data Centres, which boasts Africa’s largest network of interconnected, carrier and cloud-neutral data centre facilities, has announced plans to building a 30MW data centre facility in Accra, adding Ghana to its existing Nigeria and Togo data centres.

Latvian operator LMT has selected Nokia’s 5G Standalone (SA) Core to help deliver 5G services including network slicing, enhance its network experience and reliability, and more quickly monetise its network assets.

­­Finnish vendor Nokia has secured an early ten-year contract extension with Orange's Poland unit. 

There’s been positive news on the sustainability front from operator MTN in Cameroon, which has announced a renewable energy initiative.

Last week came news from The Federation of Businesses of the Congo (FEC)’s telecom commission that a hike in telecoms tariffs was on the way. But the telecoms regulator ARPTC has responded by saying it can’t happen.

Telefónica’s Latin American arm Telefónica Hispam (Hispanoamérica) has selected Mavenir to supply cloud-native IMS Core for fixed and mobile networks across Mexico, Colombia, and Chile.

Mobily Pay, a mobile wallet powered by leading Saudi Arabia-based telecommunications and digital service provider Mobily, and MoneyGram International, a major name in digital P2P payments, have announced a partnership to launch MoneyGram's international money transfer capabilities on Mobily Pay.

Kenya’s Safaricom and financial services giant Visa have introduced the first M-Pesa GlobalPay Visa Virtual card, a mobile-phone-based system that they say opens up global shopping for Kenyan consumers.

Satellite technology company Hughes Network Systems has announced a number of major deals that aim to bring connectivity to rural and hard-to-reach areas in Mexico.

DE-CIX (German Commercial Internet Exchange), a leading operator of internet exchanges, has announced plans to establish interconnection platforms across Africa through the DE-CIX as a Service (DaaS) partner model, and, as an initial step, has announced strategic partnerships in three African markets.

Neptune Communications has received authorisation from Jamaica’s Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) to launch satellite broadband in the market.

Angolan operator Unitel has signed a three year partnership agreement with Chinese vendor Huawei.

Saudi Arabian operator Mobily has signed a strategic memorandum of understanding (MoU) with North African service provider Telecom Egypt to build the first submarine cable system to directly connect Saudi Arabia to Egypt.

Satellite operator and connectivity provider SES has been in the news recently with backhaul deals in Papua New Guinea (PNG), Peru and Chile aimed at supporting remote connectivity.

IHS Towers has completed the acquisition of 5,701 towers from MTN South Africa for ZAR6.4 billion (US$412.5 million) as part of a leaseback agreement.

Google has backed India's ShareChat social media platform in a major funding round that implies a $5 billion valuation of the company – up from a previous valuation of $3.7 billion.

Described as a key milestone in the company's regional expansion, the recent launch of Virgin Mobile Kuwait isn’t just a first for Virgin Mobile Middle East And Africa (VMMEA); this is, we are told, the first mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in Kuwait.

The Communications Regulatory Commission (CRC) of Colombia is easing regulation around rural network deployments to incentivise regional ISPs to expand into previously unconnected areas.

Elisa has bagged the first available concession in Estonia’s 3.5GHz spectrum auctions.

Satellite broadband and related services in India are being promised a boost after a new deal involving Indian media and communications company NXT Digital (NDL) and Thailand’s Thaicom, a leading Asian satellite operator.

Pakistani operators Jazz and Telenor Pakistan have paid the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) the next instalment of their licence renewal fees despite their objections to the increases imposed by the regulator.

Could free fintech-enabled smartphones be coming to unbanked women in Africa? That’s the promise of a new strategic partnership that aims to help women to be able to save, invest, and access loans from the convenience of their own phones – even if they live miles away from a bank.

Hayo Telecom, a Senegalese mobile network operator, has chosen Telesmart.io, a provider of global number and messaging services, to provide it with a fully API-enabled number and messaging platform.

Pakistan operator Jazz, a major internet and mobile broadband provider, has signed an agreement with fibre infrastructure and services provider Nayatel, through which it will connect all of its mobile towers directly to fibre in Lahore. This fibre to the site (FTTS) project is expected to be completed by December 2022.

Egyptian bank ADCB-Egypt has extended its collaboration with Temenos to deliver next-generation digital payments on the latter’s open platform for composable banking.

The Philippines regulator the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) late last week announced its approval of the registration of Starlink Internet Services Philippines Inc. as a value-added service (VAS) provider, according to local press reports.

Vittel IDC has deployed Cloudian’s HyperStore object storage as the foundation for its storage service offerings.

This week saw a significant announcement in the field of satellite communications by the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It’s the launch of what is called The Joint Committee on Space Cooperation.