Ericsson-led open network API joint venture Aduna announced on Saturday it has struck a partnership with the Bridge Alliance to combine their efforts to promote and speed up adoption of CAMARA-based network APIs.

The question of powering and cooling data centres is continuing to make headlines, with news that in one Asia-Pacific country they could need more power by 2040 than Malaysia uses annually now.

Philippines-based operator PLDT has revealed its interest in acquiring private equity firm KKR’s stake in fintech company Maya Innovations.

PLDT’s enterprise arm has announced plans to introduce “long-range fixed wireless access” technology to underserved areas across the Philippines with challenging terrain.

Malaysian operator Maxis has selected Nokia to upgrade its data centre infrastructure in support of its future growth plans.

It’s being widely reported that Apple should be able to sell its iPhone 16 phones in Indonesia soon. Industry Minister Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita suggested this week that the long-running issue, centring around local manufacture – or the lack of it – could be close to being resolved.

Apple has launched its latest AI-powered smartphone, the iPhone 16e, in a bid to gain market share in emerging markets such as India, where it has been ramping up its focus.

Only days after making news in Indonesia, telecom and fibre consulting firm APTelecom is back in the headlines, this time in Malaysia, with an appointment to support another submarine cable project.

Multinational technology conglomerate Meta has formally announced what it calls its most ambitious subsea cable endeavour yet: Project Waterworth, which will reach five major continents and span over 50,000 kilometres, making it the world’s longest subsea cable project. It will, says Meta, use the highest-capacity technology available.

Cambodian operator CamGSM, commercially known as Cellcard, is planning to migrate its fibre network from gigabit passive optical network (GPON) to 10 gigabit symmetric passive optical network (XGS-PON) using Nokia’s Lightspan and Altiplano broadband solutions.

Indonesian operator Super Sistem, which is developing the Indonesian Barat Timur Indonesia (BTI) submarine cable system, has appointed consulting firm APTelecom to engage prospective customers on its behalf to undertake presales for the system.

Payment giant Mastercard has officially announced the launch of TRACE (Trace Financial Crime) in the Asia Pacific region. Described as a sophisticated network-level solution that harnesses artificial intelligence to identify and prevent money laundering and financial crime, it has begun its rollout in the Philippines.

AirTrunk, an Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ) hyperscale data centre specialist, has announced plans to develop its second cloud and AI-ready data centre in Malaysia.

India's second biggest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, has awarded a contract to tech giants Nokia and Qualcomm focusing on the expansion of 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) and Wi-Fi solutions to facilitate high-speed internet access to millions across India.

Thai technology company True Corporation has announced a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with GalaxySpace, a leading Chinese company in the low Earth orbit (LEO) internet satellites sector.

The Southeast Asian smartphone market rebounded in 2024 as vendors shipped 96.7 million units, an annual growth rate of 11%, snapping two years of decline.

Nokia has announced that CEO Pekka Lundmark (pictured) will depart this year to make way for Intel executive Justin Hotard, in a move seemingly aimed at sharpening its expertise in AI and data centres.

Indus Towers, regularly in the news in recent months, has now hit the headlines with a major tower purchase in India.

Thailand has said it will suspend electricity supply to some border areas with Myanmar in an effort to curb scam centres.

Malaysian operator U Mobile delivered average 5G download speeds of 597Mb/s in a trial on the 13.5km-long Penang Bridge using Huawei equipment, as the operator prepares to launch the country’s second 5G network.

Communications technology company Tata Communications and conversational and generative AI specialist CoRover.ai have announced plans to bringing sovereign AI solutions to Indian enterprises and government bodies.

The global smartphone market grew by 7% to 1.22 billion units in 2024, marking a rebound after two consecutive years of decline, with emerging markets highlighted as the industry’s key growth driver.

The fallout from the recent announcement, reported on these pages, that José Maria Álvares-Pallete had resigned from his position as Chairman & CEO of Telefónica has continued with news that he will not stay in the position of Chair of the GSMA Board of Directors.

As well as the revenue projections we covered earlier today, India’s Union Budget 2025 offers mixed but largely positive news for the telecoms sector, notably in areas such as rural coverage, tax on imported electronics, the space sector and artificial intelligence (AI).

The government of Andhra Pradesh, a state on the east coast of southern India, has announced plans to develop a 500-acre Data City in Madhurawada, a major business and residential area of Visakhapatnam, a port city and industrial centre.

The DeepSeek AI story continues to make headlines, this time through AceCloud, which claims to be the first Indian sovereign cloud provider to offer DeepSeek Gen AI models at scale on its cloud platform.

The GSMA and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) have launched a fund to equip enterprises in developing markets with the means to harness emerging technologies, including AI.

EDOTCO Bangladesh, which describes itself as the country’s leading integrated telecommunications infrastructure provider, has launched its newly modernised 5G-ready tower operation centre (TOC) in Dhaka.

Oracle has equipped its Enterprise Communications Platform (ECP) with connectivity from Space X's Starlink low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites , enabling clients to access its cloud applications in remote locations.

A China-based rival to ChatGPT, called DeepSeek, sent shockwaves across the technology industry by reportedly becoming the most downloaded free app on Apple devices and operating with fewer resources than its US counterpart.

Digital Nasional Berhad (DNB), Malaysia’s 5G network provider, and EDOTCO Group, the national digital infrastructure provider, say they have successfully completed the installation of 5G in-building solutions (IBS) at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and KLIA terminal 2 (KLIA2).