Philippines-based challenger operator Dito Telecommunity has partnered with Rakuten-owned messaging app Viber to offer zero-rated plans on the platform, aiming to strengthen its competitiveness and attract new customers.

Indian operator Vodafone Idea (Vi) has announced a strategic collaboration with tech giant IBM to help streamline operations, improve service reliability, enhance the customer experience, and accelerate the seamless delivery of digital initiatives, using artificial intelligence (AI) and the implementation of a unified DevOps execution model fuelled by automation.

State-owned telecom service provider BSNL has enjoyed a couple of decent headlines in the past week, unlike its much smaller sister company MTNL, whose financial woes seem to be worsening.

In a move that, unlike some regulatory initiatives, may actually prove popular with mobile operators and consumers, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued a manual to aid in the assessment of digital connectivity in properties.

Pixxel, an Indian space technology company, has announced that a consortium it leads, along with partners Dhruva Space, PierSight and SatSure, has been selected by the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) to design, build, own, and operate a national Earth observation constellation under a public-private partnership (PPP) framework.

A busy week for telecommunications news in Vietnam has seen yet another agreement between a state-owned Vietnamese business and a major Korean company, along with the launch of a terrestrial fibre optic cable directly connecting Vietnam to Singapore.

LG CNS, a Korean information technology solutions provider and part of multinational conglomerate LG Group, has announced plans to construct a hyperscale artificial intelligence data centre in Vietnam. This announcement follows hard on the heels of news that the company has secured a data centre deal in Indonesia.

The role of ICT in business efficiency has been in the news in Vietnam recently with plans announced for a national database dedicated to construction activities and news of the launch of SAP Labs Vietnam.

Chinese LEO satellite operator Geespace reportedly launched another batch of 11 LEO satellites into orbit on Saturday, bringing it past the halfway point of the first phase of its planned constellation.

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) partnered with Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs (Kominfo) to launch an AI-powered solution designed to protect citizens from the growing threat of digital fraud.

Malaysian clean energy solutions provider Gentari and cloud services giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) have signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for an 80MW wind power project in Tamil Nadu, India, a state on the south-eastern coast of the Indian peninsula.

Indian state-owned operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL), an oil and gas refinery in Assam in northeastern India, have signed what they call a landmark memorandum of understanding (MoU) relating to private network provision.

Xtelify, a fully owned subsidiary of Indian operator Bharti Airtel that houses Airtel’s digital assets and capabilities, has announced the launch of what it describes as a sovereign, telco-grade cloud platform called Airtel Cloud, along with software platform deals in a number of territories.

Nxtra by Airtel, a data centre-focused subsidiary of Indian technology giant Bharti Airtel Limited, and Indian renewable energy transition company AMPIN Energy Transition say they have strengthened their partnership.

Provider of integrated information and communication technology solutions ZTE Corporation has announced the successful completion of what it calls a landmark nationwide deployment in collaboration with Pakistan-based digital operator Jazz.

India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has set up ambitious targets to achieve 100% population coverage with 4G and 90% coverage with 5G, according to a draft of the country’s National Telecom Policy 2025, now being circulated for public consultation.

Philippines-based challenger operator Dito Telecommunity has reached 15 million mobile subscribers, four years after launching commercial services.

China is reportedly planning to build a network to connect thousands of new data centres in the country with the aim of selling the excess compute power and alleviating a capacity glut.

Scala Data Centres, which describes itself as Latin America’s leading platform for sustainable digital infrastructure serving the hyperscale market, says it has secured its first international project finance transaction: US$254 million in long-term funding to support the construction of three hyperscale data centres and a major power substation in Chile.

India-headquartered global communications technology player Tata Communications and cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services (AWS) are collaborating to enable an advanced AI-ready network in India. The collaboration is said to mark one of India’s largest-ever network deployments by Tata Communications in terms of size, scale and bandwidth.

TECO Electric & Machinery, a Taiwan-headquartered business group, has announced that it has secured some significant data centre projects in Malaysia, marking its entry into the hyperscale data centre sector.

Asia Pacific data centre operator Princeton Digital Group (PDG) has secured a US$1.2 billion investment from private equity firm Stonepeak to accelerate its regional expansion.

The SJC2 consortium and NEC announced on Friday that the Southeast Asia–Japan 2 (SJC2) subsea cable is now live, officially adding more than 126 Tbps of capacity to the Asia-Pacific region.

The GSMA and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have signed a strategic agreement aimed at accelerating digital transformation and expanding mobile connectivity across the Asia Pacific region.

China Telecom has announced the industry's first pilot commercial deployment of distributed training for a large language model (LLM) with 177 billion (177B) parameters, using 1024 GPUs over a 500 km field-deployed fiber link.

NEC said on Wednesday it has signed a contract with a consortium led by Singtel to build a new intra-Asian subsea cable system linking Singapore and Japan with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan.

Indian state-owned operator Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (MTNL) is apparently sinking further into a financial quagmire. It has reportedly informed India’s stock exchanges that it has defaulted on payments of both principal and interest to a group of public sector banks.

Recently, China Telecom has used 800G/λ and C+L technologies to provide high bandwidth for a distributed cluster with 1024 GPUs in the field-deployed network, achieving distributed training of a 175 billion parameters GPT3 (GPT3-175B) model through 120 km field-deployed G.652 fiber.

The global smartphone market declined by 1% year-on-year in Q2 2025, marking the first quarterly drop in six quarters, according to analyst firm Canalys. The modest fall reflects continued subdued consumer demand across key markets.

Two recent news items from Pakistan highlight the country's attempts to manage two very different but pivotal areas of the modern telecommunications landscape: QoS and satellite internet.

Two recently announced projects in Indonesia and Morocco underline the continuing drive to power data centres in a sustainable manner.