Philippines operator NOW Telecom Company has, it seems, lost its licence to operate by order of regulator the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).

The announcement, late last week, of the largest recycled water supply scheme of its kind in Malaysia to date underlines both the challenge data centre growth offers to water supply and the growing urgency of attempts to meet it.

ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (India) has announced plans open a new artificial intelligence (AI)-ready data centre campus in New Town, Kolkata, the primary financial and commercial centre of eastern and northeastern India, in the second quarter of 2025. The planned investment is said to be INR4.5 billion (aboutUS$52.7 million).

Following hard on the heels of a Nokia-Vodafone Idea agreement announced earlier this week, tech giant Nokia and Indian operator Bharti Airtel say they are expanding their partnership with the deployment of Nokia’s Packet Core appliance-based and fixed wireless access (FWA) solutions.

Alcatel is planning to restart mobile phone sales in India – or, more accurately perhaps, French technology brand Alcatel, operated independently by China-headquartered TCL Communications under a license from Nokia, is making a comeback in the Indian market.

Samsung Electronics has appointed mobile chief Roh Tae-moon as acting head of its consumer and smartphone unit following the death of former boss Han Jong-Hee.

Vietnam-based operator MobiFone has officially launched its 5G mobile services, making it the third provider to commercialise 5G in the Southeast Asian country.

Malaysian operator U Mobile has announced that it has received official approval from the country’s telecoms regulator to deploy its 5G network.

More good news for Vodafone Idea has followed hard on the heels of the recent announcement that the Indian government has expanded its ownership stake in the operator. This time it involves a network upgrade supported by tech giant Nokia.

Viamericas, a provider of remittance and international money transfer services, says it has launched its open payment network in the Philippines.

Singtel subsidiary and technology services company NCS is expanding its footprint in the Asia-Pacific region by acquiring a 51% majority stake in Globe Telecom’s IT unit, Yondu.

Malaysian operator Maxis has partnered with Nokia to deploy data centre networking solutions for large enterprises, aiming to meet the growing demand for AI and cloud adoption.

Backbone telecommunications network provider Telecom Fiji has announced the successful completion of the Savusavu to Labasa Fibre Project, described as a major milestone in enhancing digital connectivity across Vanua Levu, the second largest of Fiji’s islands.

Recent cable landing station news from eastern India and West Africa underlines the continuing growth of the submarine cable business across both regions.

Underlining the continuing effect of the AI boom on Asia, Thailand has reportedly approved an estimated US$2.7 billion of investments in data centres and cloud services from both local and foreign firms.

MyRepublic Indonesia is a provider of fiber optic internet and subscription TV services that offers solutions for the internet and entertainment needs of Indonesians. The company has been working with ZTE to boost high-speed internet access in Indonesia. We spoke to Mei Zhonghua, President of Asia-Pacific and CIS, ZTE Corporation, and Timotius Sulaiman, CEO of MyRepublic, to learn more.

Indonesian market leading operator Telkomsel has signed a mobile video advertising deal with Novosol to boost high-margin mobile ad revenue in the country.

In what is described as a groundbreaking step towards accelerating Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 adoption in India, technology giant Ericsson, Volvo Group, a leading manufacturers of trucks, buses, construction equipment and marine and industrial engines, and operator Bharti Airtel have announced a research partnership to explore the potential of extended reality (XR), digital twin technologies and AI in the manufacturing sector.

Malaysian operator Maxis has introduced a Gen AI assistant, Mia (Maxis Intelligent Assistant), developed in collaboration with AWS for its B2B subscribers.

China Unicom and Huawei co-hosted an innovation summit during Mobile World Congress 2025, themed 5G-A Empowering, AI Transforming, Digital Living.

Aspiring direct-to-device (D2D) satellite player Astrum Mobile said on Monday it has contracted Switzerland-based satellite manufacturer SWISSto12 to build its NEASTAR-1 satellite that will provide 5G non-terrestrial network (NTN) broadcast services across Asia-Pacific.

Tencent Cloud and TrueWatch have announced a partnership to launch what is said to be Indonesia's first multi-cloud SaaS observability platform.

Malaysian 5G network provider U Mobile announced on Friday it has signed an MoU with China Unicom Operations Malaysia (CUMY) to develop IoT, smart mobility and sustainable technology solutions, with the additional goal of strengthening economic ties between Malaysia and China.

Tech giant Microsoft has announced two major investments – in South Africa and India – though with two very different focuses. One involves cloud expansion. The other involves afforestation. 

Several Bangladeshi firms have reportedly partnered with satellite operator Starlink to support the setup of earth stations in Bangladesh.

Airwallex, a global payments and financial platform for growing businesses, says it has signed definitive agreements to acquire CTIN Pay, an intermediary payment service (IPS) licensed company in Vietnam.

India’s Tata Electronics and Taiwanese companies Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) and Himax have announced a semiconductor-related memorandum of understanding (MoU).

Tune Talk, described as Malaysia’s fastest-growing digital telco, has signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with Mavenir, the cloud-native network infrastructure provider, which will provide it with a cutting-edge cloud-native digital OSS and BSS platform. The announcement was made at MWC 2025.

Could a new hydrogen fuel cell-based backup power solution for telecom towers revolutionise power supply in India by providing a cleaner, more efficient alternative to traditional diesel generators?

Malaysian operator CelcomDigi has announced at MWC25 its new partnership with Aduna, a landmark venture between some of the world's leading telecom operators and Ericsson that began in 2024.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has reportedly given approval to 13 foreign companies to enter the telecoms sector to offer value added services in Beijing, Shanghai, Hainan and Shenzhen.

Intelligent connectivity company Syniverse has announced that it has furthered its partnership with Limitless Mobile, a specialist mobile network operator (MNO) focused on enabling technically advanced mobile use cases for enterprise and government customers, by providing connectivity for the first commercial 5G SA roaming sessions involving MNOs globally. Both companies are attending MWC25.

Philippines operator Globe Telecom and Orex SAI, Japanese operator Docomo's open RAN service brand, developed in collaboration with multiple global vendors, have announced a partnership to collaborate in the Philippines to launch a demonstration experiment for open RAN.