China has launched a two-year commercial trial programme for satellite Internet of Things (IoT) services, a move designed to expand low-Earth-orbit (LEO) connectivity and speed up adoption of non-terrestrial IoT across key industries.

Technology giant ZTE, operator China Unicom Liaoning and Dalian Changhai Airport have announced the successful launch of a 5G-Advanced (5G-A) ISAC private network aimed at improving low-altitude security and airport safety.

A potentially significant new approach to enabling real-time network optimisation and coverage improvement, particularly in underserved areas, has been trialled in the Philippines.

Thailand is offering another strong reminder of its intentions in the data centre market with the recently reported approval of US$3.1 billion in new investments by the country’s Board of Investment (BOI) for four new data centre projects.

Princeton Digital Group (PDG) has begun construction on a new 120MW data centre campus, claiming it to be one of the largest single-site builds underway in Indonesia.

Globe Telecom has signed a new JPY20 billion (US$127 million) loan facility with Japan’s Mizuho Bank, adding fresh financing to support its capital expenditure plans and debt refinancing efforts.

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) is set to sell around half of its stake in Ooredoo Group in a move to raise additional capital on the Qatar Stock Exchange.

Huawei’s sixth Innovation and Intellectual Property (IP) Forum, held in Beijing this month, saw experts in innovation and intellectual property from around the world gather to explore the importance of openness and IP protection in driving innovation and social progress.

Indian real estate developer Anant Raj, now also operating in the data centre space as Anant Raj Cloud, has reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Andhra Pradesh, a state on the east coast of southern India, for the development of new data centre facilities and an IT park.

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) has teamed up with Nokia and NVIDIA to open an AI-RAN Research Center in Surabaya, Indonesia, marking a major step toward building AI-native telecom networks in the country.

ONATi, the incumbent telecommunications service provider in French Polynesia, has migrated the management of its interconnect voice traffic and national and international partners to Oculeus’ Captura NG solution.

A number of major data centre operators in the Philippines have come together to form what is described as a unified alliance that aims to strengthen the country’s position as the next digital hub of Southeast Asia.

BENEFIT, a leading Bahrain company in fintech and electronic financial transactions, licensed by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) as an ancillary service provider to the Kingdom’s financial services industry, has announced a deal that will help to enable real-time cross-border payments between Bahrain and India.

There is a shortage of high-quality teaching in schools across the globe, but a new, innovative model is equipping teachers with the tools they need to prepare the next generation of minds.

Open RAN pioneer Rakuten Symphony and SLT-Mobitel, the national telecommunications services provider in Sri Lanka, are to collaborate on a pilot project to build an open radio access network (open RAN) comprising 4G and 5G NSA/SA (non-standalone and standalone) sites within Sri Lanka.

Humain, a global artificial intelligence company based in Saudi Arabia building end-to-end AI capabilities, and AirTrunk, a data centre platform in the Asia Pacific region, have agreed to establish a strategic partnership to build data centres in Saudi Arabia.

Indian operator Vodafone Idea finally has some good news to celebrate after a reported gain in subscriber numbers and a potentially positive outcome in its pursuit of relief from AGR debt demands. But will this good fortune last?

Philippine operator PLDT is upgrading its digital infrastructure using optical technology from US vendor Ciena to improve data transmission from the Asia Direct Cable (ADC) system to local users.

Sixty-five nations have signed what is being described as a landmark United Nations treaty in Hanoi aimed at tackling cybercrime.

A new investigative report claims to document ways in which a group of large US brokers appear to be facilitating what is estimated to be a billion-dollar trade in exporting electronic waste to developing countries.

Following the news, reported earlier this month, that the world’s first commercial underwater data centre is now operational in Hainan in China, a Chinese company has now completed construction on what is claimed to be the world’s first wind-powered underwater data centre.

Two major international subsea cable connectivity announcements have just been made – both of them relevant to developing markets. One, not too surprisingly, comes from the Philippines. However, the other has a starting point in Greece – on the island of Crete.

State-owned company Telkom Indonesia, a multinational telecommunications conglomerate, has agreed to partially spin off its wholesale fibre connectivity business to its infrastructure-focused subsidiary Telkom Infrastruktur Indonesia in a deal valued at 35.787 trillion rupiah ($2.16 billion).

AdventEnergy, the retail electricity supply arm of Aboitiz Power Corporation, a power company in the Philippines that champions the use of both renewable and non-renewable energy sources, has entered into a strategic partnership with Philippines telecommunications company DITO Telecommunity by providing electricity to 1,642 of its cell towers.

It’s been a busy time for cashless payments in India, with two big announcements in the past week involving the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India.

Myanmar is making telecoms news headlines yet again – and yet again this news is receiving attention well beyond the specialist press. This time it’s because the scam centre business that has burgeoned in the country is allegedly being enabled, in part, by satellite communications provider Starlink.

AI technologies-focused company Graphcore, a wholly owned subsidiary of multinational investment holding company SoftBank, says it is opening a new AI engineering campus in Bengaluru in India.

Papua New Guinea’s state-owned telecoms network wholesaler PNG DataCo says that internet services in the southeastern towns of Popondetta and Alotau have been disrupted due to a subsea cable break likely caused by an earthquake on Tuesday.

The world’s first commercial underwater data centre is now operational in Hainan, an island province of China and the nation’s southernmost point.

Private 5G continues to make steady inroads into the Indian market. Advanced 5G infrastructure specialist Tidal Wave Technologies and mission-critical communication solutions provider Consort Digital say they have successfully completed a pilot project for 5G-based mission-critical communications for the first time at a mine in India.