After six weeks during which its government has faced increased criticism, Tanzania has finally reduced the amount of its controversial mobile money transaction levy – by 30 percent.

Altan Redes, the consortium tasked with deploying Mexico's 4.5G shared network – called Red Compartida – has announced that it has secured a $50 million loan from shareholders.

Despite the harsh impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the country’s population and economy, Colombia’s telecom sector had a solid year thanks to positive performances in the fixed-line broadband, mobile broadband, and mobile voice and data markets.

Cellulant has entered into a five-year partnership with Senegal-based Gainde 2000 to offer an end-to-end Pan-African technology infrastructure and payments solutions for trade, revenue & tax collection for governments and multinational companies.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has won the backing of the Islamabad High Court (IHC) for its 2019 decision to increase the licence renewal fees of mobile operators Jazz and Telenor Pakistan.

Paraguay’s regulator Conatel (Consejo Nacional de Telecomunicaciones) has agreed to renew Claro and Tigo’s 4G AWS licences.

The Russian telecom market is the largest in Europe, supported by a population approaching 147 million.

Romania’s telecom market has undergone several significant changes in recent years.

Although Croatia’s telecom market is dominated by the incumbent telco Hrvatski Telekom and the local units of United Group and Telekom Austria, there is effective competition from a number of smaller operators.

India’s second-largest wireless telco Bharti Airtel's CAPEX to increase to about US$5 billion in FY 2022 from $4.6 billion in FY 2021, global rating agency Fitch said.

The Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) in Saudi Arabia announced the launch of the local roaming service, which aims mainly to maintain network service in villages and deserts covered by telecom services in all regions of the Kingdom.

TIM Brasil and suppliers Ericsson and MediaTek conducted the first pilot tests in the Brazilian city of Itajuba, in the state of Minas Gerais, with carrier aggregation (CA) in 5G standalone architecture.

Globe Telecom, a major provider of telecommunications services in the Philippines announced that it has signed for financing worth PHP13 billion (USD261.8 million) with the Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co (PHP10 billion) and the Bank of the Philippine Islands (PHP3 billion).

Iran’s incoming Minister of ICT Isa Zarepour has indicated that the country’s long-delayed National Information Network (NIN) project should be completed by 2025.

The slow process to open up Ethiopia’s telecom market was completed with the licensing of the Safaricom-led Global Partnership for Ethiopia consortium.

Montenegro has a small telecom market supported by a population of only 623,000. Fixed broadband services are available via a variety of technology platforms, though fibre is the dominant platform, accounting for almost 40% of connections.

Brazil has one of the largest mobile markets in Latin America due to the sheer size of its population.

Cambodia’s mobile-dominated telecoms sector spent much of 2020 battling two major challenges: the global pandemic, and the government’s retraction of trial licenses for the rollout of 5G.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a relatively minor impact on the Philippine’s telecom sector in 2020. Subscriber numbers fell in some areas, but this was offset by strong growth in mobile data and broadband usage since a significant proportion of the population transitioned to working or studying from home.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) recommended a slew of measures, including fixing minimum broadband speed at 2 megabits per second, to promote internet connectivity and increase connection speed.

MTN Cameroon (MTNC), a subsidiary of the South African multinational mobile telecommunications company MTN Group, has requested a licence from the telecom regulator to deploy 5G.

Indonesia-based mobile telecommunications services operator XL Axiata said that it has intensively built a 4G network in Banten Province in the last year. Within a year, there was the construction of more than 630 4G BTS to remote areas that were previously unreachable.

The South African telecommunications regulator has finally decided it will call a halt to emergency spectrum use by the country’s mobile operators – after more than 17 months.

AXESS Networks, a provider of connectivity solutions via satellite, has been chosen by the Arab Satellite Communications Organization (Arabsat) to provide connectivity and teleport services on the Appendix 30B C-band space segment on-board its Arabsat-5A satellite at an orbital location of 30.5°E with a coverage footprint across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Global smartphone shipments are continuing to grow – and that growth is being led by strong recovery in many emerging markets. That’s the view of market intelligence provider International Data Corporation (IDC) in the latest edition of its Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

A1 Croatia will deploy 5G radio and core networks nationwide in partnership with Ericsson.

Honduras’ state-back operator Hondutel has revealed that its losses topped HNL298.9 million (US$12.4 million) for the first half of 2021, reportedly prompting a rescue package from the country’s government.

Iraqi operator Asiacell Telecom has chosen Nokia to build its next-generation microwave network.

Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), the largest mobile network operator in Russia, has proposed spinning off its infrastructure assets, an idea it's taking to shareholders.

Chinese multinational technology company Huawei Technologies has teamed up with the Brazilian National Service for Industrial Training (Senai) to open a professional training and certification lab for the ICT and telecom sectors in Cachoeiro de Itapemirim (Espirito Santo).

ZTE Corporation announced it has won the bid of the centralised procurement of IPRAN products from China Unicom.

MegaFon, the second-largest mobile phone operator and the third-largest telecom operator in Russia, announced that its revenues grew by 7.1% year-on-year to RUB84.1 billion (USD1.1 billion) in the second quarter of 2021, with underlying service revenue improving by 4.5% to RUB76.6 billion.

Confirming what a lot of people might have guessed given the events of recent years, Nigerian regulator the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) recently reported an increase of over 200 per cent in data usage over the last three years in the country.