Global smartphone shipments rose 2.3% year on year to 336.6 million units in the fourth quarter of 2025, shrugging off ongoing chip supply constraints and buoyed by sustained demand for premium devices.

A recent update of Brazil’s General Telecommunications Law means that cooperatives from all over the country have gained authorisation to offer telecommunications services, including telephony and broadband internet.

Millicom’s Paraguayan unit Tigo has raised around US$77 million through a bond issuance in the local capital market, marking a first for a Paraguayan corporate issuer in attracting international investors via locally issued instruments.

Latin America-focused operator Millicom is considering a possible acquisition of Telefónica’s Chilean unit, as the Spanish group continues to exit non-core markets, Bloomberg reported.

Data and AI deals are very much in the news at the moment, thanks notably to a South American sale involving digital giant Atos and plans announced by investment company SoftBank Group to acquire digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge Group.

Apple has settled its case with Brazilian antitrust regulator CADE, which had criticised alleged restrictions by the technology giant on certain payment methods.

The slow but steady growth of private networks in Latin America appears to be continuing with last week’s news from operator Telefonica Movistar Colombia that its business division Movistar Empresas has implemented the first industrial private LTE network in a maritime terminal in Colombia.

Peru’s telecoms regulator OSIPTEL reported a 3% year-on-year increase in sector revenues to SOL12.5 billion (US$3.7 billion) in the first three quarters of 2025, driven by rising demand for mobile and fixed internet services.

Telecoms activity, you might think, should be slowing down as the holiday season approaches – but 5G launches are still making headlines. Following recent announcements from Sri Lanka’s Dialog Axiata and SLT-Mobitel, it’s now the turn of Claro Paraguay.

Uruguay-headquartered dLocal, which describes itself as the leading payment platform connecting global merchants to emerging markets, has announced a new strategic partnership with commercial payments specialist Convera.

El Salvador’s telecommunications regulator, SIGET, has selected Liberty Networks to construct and deploy the country’s first subsea cable, in a move aimed at expanding international connectivity capacity and meeting rising demand.

Mexico plans to suspend unregistered mobile lines very early in 2026, a deadline that allows only a matter of weeks for consumers to respond.

Brazilian SaaS company Mambo WiFi and US-based decentralized wireless communications firm Helium say they have launched a new joint venture to bring Helium’s network of Wi-Fi offload hotspots to mobile users in Brazil.

It’s only been a week or two since its launch was formally announced, but it seems that Huawei’s RuralCow, a rapid-deployment, all-in-one mobile base station that provides mobile coverage to remote rural areas, has already made an impact in a major market.

Australia-headquartered satellite IoT company Myriota has announced the general availability of what it says is the world’s first commercial 5G non-terrestrial network engineered for IoT.

TIM Group's global operator Sparkle says it has expanded its network in Chile with the launch of a third point of presence (PoP) in Santiago, which also marks its fourth PoP in the country overall.

America Movil, a provider of telecommunications services across Latin America, says it will no longer insist on a joint purchase of financially challenged operator Telefonica Chile with another operator, Entel.

TIM will roll out a 5G network at Brazil’s Estacao Comandante Ferraz in Antarctica, using Nokia radio equipment and satellite backhaul supplied through a combination of Starlink’s LEO constellation and Hispasat’s GEO satellites.

Amazon has started trialling its Leo (Project Kuiper) satellite broadband service with selected enterprise customers, marking the first phase of a broader commercial rollout planned for later this year to take on Starlink.

Reported last week but only recently receiving wider coverage is the news that a Brazilian company – Rio de Janeiro-based Sollar Machine – has announced an investment of about US$9 million to build a data centre in Paraguay that will operate independently of the national power grid.

NetBIT, the enterprise services unit of Mexican ISP ENI Networks, announced on Thursday it has collaborated with Ciena and Braxem to launch a new offering that leverages passive optical network (PON) access technology to drive digital transformation for Mexican enterprises.

IHS Brazil, part of the IHS Towers group, announced on Tuesday it has  expanded its distributed antenna systems (DAS) project at Afonso Pena Airport in São José dos Pinhais, Curitiba metropolitan area, in partnership with Motiva Airports.

The government of Guyana and AI infrastructure company Cerebras Systems have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to build and operate an artificial intelligence (AI) data centre of up to 100MW in Wales in the Demerara region on the country’s coast.

An interesting memorandum of understanding (MoU) has just been announced in Brazil. It aims to support power infrastructure at the Rio AI City project and involves a number of partners – including one that is part of the Google Moonshot initiative.

Satellite communications provider Globalstar has announced the addition of eight new six-metre C-3 tracking antennas to its ground stations across Brazil, supporting its third-generation mobile satellite services across Central and South America.

Multinational telecommunications corporation Orange and satellite operator Eutelsat have announced the inauguration of a new teleport hosting Eutelsat's satellite gateway in the Caribbean island Martinique. This strategic project aims to strengthen satellite coverage for the Eutelsat OneWeb constellation in the Caribbean region.

Problems continue to pile up for troubled Brazilian operator Oi, with news late last week that rival operator Claro is to take over a connectivity contract it formerly managed.