No sooner has number three South African operator Telkom tried to stop the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) from holding a spectrum auction in March than the number one operator has got involved – on ICASA’s side.

Saudi Arabia’s stc pay, the digital payment provider service of telecommunications company stc, has launched Qattah, which it describes as an integrated service which will allow customers to easily share and track expenses with multiple people, removing the stress from splitting bills.

The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) of the Bahamas has floated the possibility of introducing a third player to the market this year in its proposed Annual Plan for 2022.

Multinational operator Airtel Africa has confirmed what is referred to as the first closing of the transaction to sell its telecoms tower assets in Tanzania for some $176.1 million.

The wait for 5G rollout and expansion of 4G capacity in South Africa may now go on even longer thanks to efforts by operator Telkom to delay the spectrum auction due to happen in March.

The Consumers Federation of Kenya (Cofek) and two of the country’s operators, Airtel Kenya and Telkom Kenya, have joined in the controversy over a case involving mobile termination rates (MTR) – the charges levied by a mobile service provider on other telecommunications service providers for terminating calls in its network.

Bharti Airtel has decided not to restructure its business after determining that its current structure is “optimal for leveraging” reforms announced by India’s government in September 2021.

The Ghana Smart Cities Project has been given an official go-ahead after last year’s provisional authorization.

The new year has seen another multi-country roaming agreement come into effect as residents of Andean Community countries see roaming charges abolished.

Although Nigeria’s NIN enrolments are now said to have reached 71 million, the country’s government evidently feels not enough Nigerians have linked their National Identification Number (NIN) to their Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) and has approved a further extension of the deadline for the exercise to 31 March this year.

El Salvador’s competition watchdog has ruled that the sale of Telefonica’s Movistar and Telefonica Multiservicios units to General International Telecom Limited requires no antitrust authorisation.

Vodafone has announced the launch of services by its new Oman operation – the third operator in the sultanate. Vodafone Oman launched late last week.

Chinese fibre provider Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable (YOFC) is entering the broadband market in four Peruvian regions. It will use digital enablement expert Alepo’s BSS/OSS solution.

Argentina’s ongoing problem with hyperinflation continues to distort the telecom market’s performance, which shows strong growth in revenue but only modest gains in subscriber numbers each year.

Although El Salvador is the smallest country in central America geographically, it has the fourth largest economy in the region. Economic potential is limited by the relatively small population, while the country’s telecom sector has been restricted by poor infrastructure and unequal income distribution.

Sri Lanka’s fixed-line telephony market was one of the very few in the world to experience a significant upsurge in subscriptions in 2020. While the country suffers from a relatively poor fixed-line infrastructure and a correspondingly strong mobile sector, demand for traditional phone services increased 14% in 2020.

Tanzania’s telecom sector enjoys effective competition, particularly in the mobile segment. There remains considerable movement within it, with Smart having stopped services in late 2019 and Tigo Tanzania having completed its merger with Zantel. Tigo Tanzania in April 2021 was sold by its parent company MIC as it sought to focus on its operations in Latin America.

Following elections held in August 2021, Zambia's new government immediately established a Ministry of Technology and Science to promote the use of ICT in developing economic growth and social inclusion. This focus on ICT, and on telecoms in particular, has been central to government strategies for some years.

Until late 2020, Lesotho’s telecom regulator maintained a market duopoly between the privatised national operator, Econet Telecom Lesotho (ETL), which is focussed on fixed-line services, and Vodacom Lesotho, which dominates the mobile sector.

Angola’s telecom sector in recent years has benefited from political stability, which has encouraged foreign investment in the sector. The government and regulator have also set in train mechanisms to open up the telecom sector to new competitors, with Africell having secured a universal licence and in so doing becoming the country’s fourth MNO.

Ghana’s telecom market has undergone several changes in recent years, following the privatisation of the incumbent telco Ghana Telecom and its rebranding as Vodafone Ghana. Two of the key players merged to form AirtelTigo in 2017, though in mid-2020 the parent companies of the operator decided to exit the market. The sale and transfer of AirtelTigo to the state was completed in November 2021.

Eritrea’s telecom sector operates under a state-owned monopoly for fixed and mobile services. Partly as a result of such restrictions on competition, the country has the least developed telecommunications market in Africa.

The slow process to open up Ethiopia’s telecom market was completed with the licensing of the Safaricom-led Global Partnership for Ethiopia consortium. The country had been one of the last in Africa to allow its national telco a monopoly on all telecom services including fixed, mobile, internet and data communications.

During the last few years Libya has struggled to rebuild its economy and infrastructure following disruption caused by the civil war and the subsequent political unrest. Much of the telecom infrastructure was destroyed or stolen following the 2011 disturbances, including about a quarter of the country’s mobile tower sites.

For many years Oman’s mobile market was a duopoly between the incumbent telco Omantel and its challenger Ooredoo Oman. In February 2021, Vodafone Group and Oman Future Telecommunications consortium secured a license to operate the Sultanate’s third network, with services being under the Vodafone Oman brand. The new operator has been able to extend its reach based on a tower leasing arrangement signed in 2020 with Oman Tower Company.

Qatari multinational telecommunications company Ooredoo Group has selected US-based cybersecurity company Fortinet to improve its Enterprise EDGE portfolio based on the Fortinet Secure SD-WAN. 

Argentina's Camara de Cooperativas de Telecomunicaciones (Chamber of Telecommunications Cooperatives, or Catel) has announced that Imowi, its MVNO service, will launch on 20 January 2022.

Arab National Bank (ANB), a leading banking institution in Saudi Arabia, is adopting open hybrid cloud platforms from Red Hat, a provider of open source solutions, to accelerate digital banking innovation.

Israeli telecommunications provider Bezeq has announced that the Bezeq Group, through Bezeq International, has signed a memorandum of understanding for the purchase of 70 percent of the shares of the cloud computing company, CloudEdge, from its controlling shareholder, Softwatch.

National regulator the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has determined a new international termination rate (ITR) for voice services paid by overseas telecom carriers for terminating international calls on local networks in Nigeria. It is to be set at $0.045.

A proposed subsea internet cable that would be designed to connect Chile and Australia came closer this week with the appointment by the Chilean government of a partner in the project.