The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced at Mobile World Congress 2026 on Monday that Saudi telco Mobily and Qatar-based Ooredoo Group have made fresh pledges for its Partner2Connect Digital Coalition to bridge the digital divide, bringing total commitments to the coalition to over US$82 billion.

Ericsson announced on Monday that it has extended its partnership with Kenyan telco Safaricom with a multi-year microwave deal aimed at fortifying Safaricom’s 5G capacity in the country.

TIM Brasil has extended its partnership with Nokia to deliver a nationwide 5G upgrade following an initial investment in the state of São Paulo.

Red Hat, a leading provider of open source solutions, has announced during MWC that operator Vodafone Oman is further advancing its digital transformation by standardising its IT infrastructure on Red Hat’s cloud-native platform.

e& UAE, the flagship telecom arm of global technology company e&, has announced at MWC26 that it has selected BroadForward's Security Edge Protection Proxy (SEPP) to enhance the security of its 5G and international roaming capabilities.

Red Hat announced on Sunday that Telefónica Brazil (a.k.a. Vivo) has migrated its business-critical service bus IT production environment from its legacy virtualisation stack to Red Hat OpenShift.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced service disruptions in one of its Availability Zones in the UAE on Sunday when a data centre lost power after catching fire, possibly due to Iranian air strikes in Dubai.

Kenyan money transfer service Pesalink says it has partnered with the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) to ease cross-border payment and speed up regional financial integration.

Nigeria has secured a US$100 million investment from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) for Project Bridge, the country’s flagship broadband expansion initiative.

The global smartphone market is forecast to decline by 13% in 2026, as a prolonged memory chip shortage weighs heavily on production and margins, according to analyst house IDC.

NEC announced on Thursday it has won a contract from Brazilian telecoms and IT infrastructure provider Eletronet to modernize and extend its fibre backbone with optical solutions from Nokia.

Satellite solutions provider Skynopy has secured financing for its SkyConnect Kenya project.

Satellite operator SES and network builder Africa Mobile Networks (AMN) have announced a milestone in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, expanding mobile connectivity to 27% of the country’s population and bringing coverage to an additional 1.3 million people.

M-Pesa Ethiopia and African AI creator platform Gebeya announced on Wednesday they have launched a subscription package that allows Ethiopians to access AI creation tools and pay for them directly via M-Pesa.

Pan-African infrastructure and services group Axian says it has secured a Decentralised Digital Financial Institution (DFI) license from the Central Bank of Comoros, enabling the creation of a newly established regulated entity operating under a prudential supervisory framework.

Hayo, a global digital service provider, says it has expanded its footprint in Francophone Africa with on-the-ground presence in Senegal.

Bahrain-headquartered technology company Beyon Group has been selection by the Kuwait Authority for Partnership Projects (KAPP) as the winning investor for the Fixed Telecommunications Network Development Project in Kuwait.

PTCL’s Ufone and China Mobile Pakistan (CMPak, a.k.a. Zong 4G) have reportedly deposited pre-bids of US$15 million each to the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to participate in its upcoming 5G spectrum auction.

InterDigital and Turk Telekom said on Monday they have implemented a collaborative cellular and Wi-Fi sensing solution that they say will pave the way towards creating intelligent, sensing-enabled 6G networks.

Nokia announced on Tuesday it is collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to showcase its agentic AI-powered 5G-Advanced network slicing solution on live networks, starting with telcos du and Orange, at Mobile World Congress 2026.

MoneyHash, a payment orchestration platform built for emerging and global markets, has announced a new partnership with Wayl, a local payment solutions provider, checkout engine, and merchant of record supporting global and regional businesses entering the Iraqi market.

The GSMA launched a new innovation fund on Monday to support small enterprises that use mobile and digital technologies to transition to green practices in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

The Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA) said on Friday it has granted Orange Money a separate license to operate as a mobile money service provider under new regulations requiring telcos to decouple from their mobile money subsidiaries.

Google has announced an investment of US$500 million in the construction of submarine cables and an international digital exchange port for the Dominican Republic. This will apparently be the company’s eighth digital exchange port in the world and the first in Latin America.

Bharti Airtel has strengthened its cybersecurity strategy by launching a new AI & Cyber Threat Research Centre in India, in partnership with US-based cloud security firm Zscaler.

Payment giant Visa says it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire two payment-related companies in Argentina – Prisma Medios de Pago and Newpay – from global private equity investor Advent International.

Ethio Telecom announced on Friday it has launched an internet-based video streaming service called “teleStream”, which it’s positioning as an alternative to satellite TV.