Features

Last week, Hurricane Melissa devastated Jamaica and swept through other islands in the Caribbean including Cuba, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Melissa was a Category 5 storm, the most intense to make Atlantic landfall for 90 years according to Agence France Press.

AI RAN (Radio Access Network) is attracting major investment from telecom providers as they seek to improve efficiencies to reduce their expenditure, with Juniper Research recently predicting that operators would plough $21 billion into AI technologies this year.

In a recent feature, I explored how operators are reducing their capex by turning to alternatives for RAN, including Infrastructure as a Service and Virtual RAN.

Deploying a mobile network has never been cheap, but the scale of the intensive capital expenditure required is increasingly pushing smaller players to seek out alternative models for delivering connectivity.

Hurricane season in the Caribbean usually runs from June to November, but the storm arrived a month early at Digicel’s Jamaica headquarters in 2024, when Marcelo Cataldo (pictured) took the top job to turn around a company struggling under billions of dollars of debt.

Next month marks Safaricom’s 25th anniversary. CEO Peter Ndegwa (pictured) was in London to reflect on the operator’s journey - from a subsidiary of Telkom Kenya to becoming the country’s largest and most valuable enterprise.

As the limitations of generative AI become clearer, agentic AI has emerged as the next trend within the sector – to the extent that the term has been widely adopted, poorly defined, and consequently often misunderstood amidst all the hype.

China Mobile (CM) was recently hailed for becoming a high-level autonomous network in only six years. The operator’s efforts were not wasteful and have showcased results that all operators, not just emerging market players, should strive for.

Globally, smartphone sales have been declining for the past few years, with emerging markets one of the few growth drivers. However, the cost of smartphones is a major barrier to adoption in these regions, and this has resulted in thriving grey markets for devices that are resold outside of

Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) are playing an increasingly vital role in spreading connectivity across emerging markets. While they typically operate in smaller-scale environments than Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), MVNOs are often hotbeds of innovation - especially in areas like

Cellular operators cannot hope to match the coverage that satellite delivers, but this advantage has long made the technology prohibitively expensive for providing widespread connectivity.

Telenor’s planned exit from Pakistan is currently being held up by the country’s competition authority – a delay the Nordic group argues is stagnating digital development in the South Asian nation.

As mobile networks expand and data demands explode, sustainability is becoming more than a buzzword, it’s a mandate. Telecom operators around the globe are under increasing pressure to reduce their carbon footprints, comply with climate regulations, and cut energy costs. But there’s a problem:

Super Apps are gaining traction globally, and while the core concept remains consistent, their implementation and reception vary significantly across diverse regions – although ease of financial management typically underpins the offering. Operators are increasingly evolving their owns

At Digital Transformation World in Copenhagen this year, there were many cheerleaders for AI - and chief among them was Anton Bonifacio (pictured), who holds the unique dual role of Chief AI Officer and Chief Information Security Officer at Globe Telecom.

Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing a paradox in its financial transformation. Mobile network coverage now extends to 84% of the population, yet only 25% are actively connected, leaving a 59% usage gap.

At a recent roundtable discussion, Veon’s Lasha Tabidze described how the group is positioning itself as a service delivery company with LLMs at the core of its AI strategy.

The telecoms sector is admirable in its pursuit of sustainability – but this is at least in part motivated by the sheer cost of constantly replacing network equipment and devices as they slide into obsolescence. While manufacturers are increasingly focused on extending the lifespan of

Connectivity in Africa has been a hot topic for decades, often framed as a bastion of opportunity due to the continent’s immense population still awaiting digital access.

Telefonica has been active in Latin America for decades – but in late 2019, it announced plans to withdraw from many of the markets in this region, divesting or spinning off its operations in a process that is ongoing. From a business standpoint, this made sense – aside from its Brazilian unit,

India’s mobile landscape prior to 2022 was murky in the context of 5G. Operators, regulators, and stakeholders were embroiled in disputes over inadequate infrastructure and high spectrum pricing - leaving the country’s burgeoning population of over one billion trailing behind as other nations

The GSMA recently released its State of the Industry Mobile Money Report, looking at how the sector has grown in the past year. Mobile money has of course been one of the major success stories for the industry in emerging markets, and we’ve certainly found in the past that ...

The linear business model long employed by the mobile device economy is slowly starting to shift, with a number of converging factors – consumer attitudes, pricing, and an industry-wide push for sustainability – leading to an increased focus on the idea of a more circular economy.

Vodacom Group CTO Dejan Kastelic (pictured) believes satellite providers like Starlink are not a threat to mobile operators but rather an opportunity to enhance telecom services in emerging markets with challenging infrastructure deployment.

As data-hungry services become prevalent globally, escalating data demand is hardly a new phenomenon – but addressing it can be a challenge in markets where fibre buildout is lacking. In terms of fibre deployment, many African countries face hurdles in terms of investment, logistics or both –

And with that, Mobile World Congress Barcelona is over for another year - so how did it stack up compared to previous years? Our editorial team gives their impressions.

It’s that time of year again – we’re off to Barcelona next week for Mobile World Congress 2025. As we did last year, our editorial team – James, Manny, Julian and Vaughan - got together to discuss the key talking points and technology trends that we expect to emerge this year.

5G was heralded as the generation to transform connectivity, vastly outperforming 4G across multiple metrics. Operators and enterprises alike were eager to explore its potential, hoping it would unlock new revenue streams for the telecoms industry.

MTN Nigeria CEO Karl Toriola has defended recent tariff hikes by mobile network operators, stating they are essential for the “survival” of the telecoms industry in Nigeria, despite significant criticism.

The journey toward financial inclusion begins with trust. For individuals unfamiliar with formal financial systems, having low-cost and reliable ways to deposit and withdraw money — cash-in, cash-out (CICO) services — is essential. These accessible solutions build confidence, encouraging people

This week’s revelation that DeepSeek’s R1 model can offer performance in line with ChatGPT at a fraction of the development cost has had a cataclysmic impact on the AI space, particularly in the US.

Chinese AI company DeepSeek coming out of nowhere and shaking the cores of Silicon Valley and Wall Street was something no one anticipated.

India’s digital transformation over the last decade has been nothing short of extraordinary. From the days of dial-up connections, the nation has surged into a new era of rapid digitization.

Developing Telecoms recently spoke with Hassan Jaber (pictured), the newly appointed CEO of Axian Telecom and a former MTN executive, as he navigates the

As we move into 2025, market analysts are advising telcos to channel their investments in Gen AI more towards revenue-generating opportunities rather than back-office productivity, and to prioritise high-value enterprise customers even over consumers. However, the difficult economic climate

As had been anticipated, 2024 proved to be another challenging year for the communications industry. Declining growth in fixed and mobile broadband network investments coupled with the ongoing struggle to monetise new 5G services, and accompanied by the global economic downturn, continued to

The integration of AI presents as many challenges to operators as it does opportunities. We recently explored how telcos are ensuring an ethical approach to AI in terms of corporate governance, and how they are able to demonstrate this through assurance models and tools.

With around 75% of operators now launching Generative AI commercially, integrated AI strategies are increasingly essential for facilitating the interactions between AI and networks. Societal concerns around AI adoption put pressure on businesses to demonstrate an ethical approach in

The Philippines is well on its way to becoming a major connectivity hub in Asia. The archipelago has a strategic geographical location and is a key node for submarine connectivity, with the subsea route between the Philippines and the US attracting particular investment.

In what has been an unprecedented year for global elections, the world may look drastically different by next year. For Ukrainians, however, life changed profoundly two years ago. On 24 February 2022, many packed the bare essentials and fled to safe havens as Russian forces began their

Starlink’s ascension has made waves in the satellite sector across the last year – in particular, the number of operating licences it has snapped up in emerging markets feels like the satellite equivalent of a land-grab.

At the recent Net Zero Festival in London, the role of AI in the transition towards net zero was the subject of a panel discussion that brought together key thinkers in the sector.

At GITEX Global 2024 in Dubai, artificial intelligence (AI) was the most talked-about topic, with companies from across industries showcased how AI and machine learning are reshaping business operations and consumer experiences.

For the longest time, Africa has been the continent chronically playing catch-up, unable to compete with larger economic powerhouses in more developed markets.

As the ITU prepares to hold the World Telecommunications Standardization Assembly (WTSA) in India – the first time the event has ever taken place in Asia – we spoke to Bilel Jamoussi, Deputy-Director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), to discuss how the experiences of

Satellite communications are a longstanding technology that have remained inaccessible due to their higher costs – and arguably limited capabilities - compared to terrestrial networks. However, recent advances in the technology have seen direct-to-device (D2D) satellite connectivity gaining

Despite the surge in demand for smartphones last year in Africa, feature phones continue to hold their ground and account for a substantial 52% of market share on the continent.

Recognising the potential boost for the economy, Malaysia broke the mould by opting to push mobile network operators to deploy 5G through a single network strategy.

As global demand for data continues to surge, the need for more robust and efficient connectivity solutions becomes paramount. Enter 5G standalone – a transformative technology poised to revolutionise not just download and upload speeds but unlock an array of innovative use cases. This next-gen

Open RAN has long been billed as an appealing option for vendors in emerging markets but numerous factors have stalled adoption. The cost of ownership is relatively high, and a core part of the appeal – the freedom to choose equipment from different suppliers – is somewhat undermined as many