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Delivering a satisfying customer experience is essential to any sales process, but the expectations that telecom operators face are higher than most.

LEO satellite operator Starlink has scored another licence in the Pacific Islands to offer services – this one in the Solomon Islands, after two years of discussions with the government.

Google announced on Thursday it will invest US$850 million in its long-planned Terros data centre in Canelones, Uruguay, a month after convincing the government that the facility won’t exacerbate the country’s water shortage due to drought.

Malaysian telco CelcomDigi and agritech startup BoomGrow Productions say they have partnered to launch 5G and AI-powered machine farms that they say will enhance sustainable farming practices and food production in the country.

Reliance Jio’s parent company, Reliance Industries Limited, is reportedly planning to build AI-ready data centres in Jamnagar as part of the company’s overall strategy of “democratising” access to AI infrastructure.

Orange Liberia and ZTE said on Thursday they have successfully completed a project to build new base station sites in rural areas across the country that they say significantly enhances network coverage in those areas.

Hong Kong-based global ICT service provider and network operator HGC Global Communications (HGC) announced on Wednesday that it has launched a data centre interconnect (DCI) solution in Bangkok.

Telkom Indonesia’s international arm Telin said on Wednesday it has signed a strategic partnership with Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison to develop ICE System 2, the latest announced leg of Telin’s Indonesia Cable Express subsea cable project.

There’s been a flurry of African news from Starlink – satellite communications company SpaceX’s low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite internet service – in recent days, culminating with this week’s announcement that Botswana has granted an operating licence to the service.

Bite Group has selected Nokia’s Packet Core appliance-based solution as it seeks to deploy advanced 5G services while simplifying its network architecture in Latvia and Lithuania.

Bayobab Kenya, part of Bayobab Group, the digital infrastructure business arm of MTN Group, announced on Tuesday the completion of a terrestrial fibre network connecting Mombasa to Uganda via the border cities of Malaba and Busia.

Indian telco Bharti Airtel is reportedly planning to shut down its Wynk Music streaming service in favour of a partnership with Apple Music as part of a broader exclusive content deal involving Apple TV+.

iColo, which designs, builds, and operates state of- the-art carrier-neutral data centres in Kenya and Mozambique, has announced a significant expansion of its renewable energy initiatives with the installation of solar panels at its facilities in Kenya.

BDx Indonesia has announced the launch of the first phase of its interconnected internet exchange (IX) ecosystem in Indonesia.

Abu Dhabi-based Marlan Space, a new space company affiliated with International Holding Company (IHC), a global diversified conglomerate, also based in Abu Dhabi, has established a joint venture with US-headquartered space infrastructure company Loft Orbital to form Orbitworks, the Middle East’s first private space infrastructure company.

Operator Claro Argentina and vendor Nokia have signed what is described as a comprehensive 5G deal through which Nokia will deploy 5G infrastructure across the country for Claro.

Indonesian telco Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison says it has completed a large core network consolidation project in Jakarta that saw its packet-switched core network transformed to a cloud-native core.

Kenyan telco Safaricom has reportedly written a letter to the Communications Authority of Kenya complaining that LEO satellite operator Starlink is a threat to the telecoms market and should be required to partner with local operators rather than compete with them.

After a number of delays, the Colombian government’s plans to connect schools in isolated areas via Wi-Fi is apparently resuming.

Nokia has announced that it is further strengthening its partnership with 4G and 5G network-as-a-service (NaaS) operator Next-Gen InfraCo (NGIC) by building a 5G mobile core network.

PLDT’s wireless arm Smart Communications says it is banking on affordable 5G devices as a key part of its strategy to drive growth in its 5G business in the Philippines as it plans on stronger rollout of its 4G and 5G networks for the rest of 2024.

Airtel Nigeria says it has successfully set up a satellite dish in Lagos for Eutelsat OneWeb’s LEO satellite broadband service, which it says will be used to bring high-speed internet to remote areas.

Liberia is the latest African country to be hit with internet service disruptions, which the Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA) has attributed to a cut in the ACE (Africa Coast to Europe) subsea cable.

Amazon Web Services announced the launch of its AWS Asia Pacific (Malaysia) Region on Thursday, along with a pledge to invest an estimated US$6.2 billion (around MYR 29.2 billion) in Malaysia from now to 2038.

A second big data centre story this month has come from the Democratic Republic of Congo as it inaugurates a US$30 million data centre from Raxio Group, said to be Africa’s leading carrier-neutral Tier III data centre operator.

Ethio Telecom partnered with financial powerhouse Visa to launch the first Visa digital wallet in Ethiopia, a move the operator claimed modernises remittance and bolster its fintech business.

Brazilian ISP InfoRR is partnering with service provider 4WNet Telecomunicações to build a new DWDM optical network using equipment from Brazilian vendor Padtec to expand operations from the state of Roraima to Amazonas.

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison’s ICT arm Lintasarta announced on Wednesday the launch of GPU Merdeka, its new GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) that offers a sovereign AI cloud running on Nvidia GPUs and software.

Nokia announced on Thursday that Telekom Malaysia (TM) will use its Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) solution to build a dedicated terrestrial optical network to better manage growing data traffic and improve data center connectivity.

There have been further developments in the controversy in Pakistan reported yesterday relating to slow internet speeds.  A new contribution from regulator the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has moved the blame away from VPNs.

Bhutan Telecom is deploying Ciena’s coherent routing solutions to support booming data traffic demands in the Kingdom of Bhutan.

A2P voice and messaging solutions provider Vox Solutions said on Tuesday it has signed an exclusive interworking agreement Libyan mobile operator Almadar Aljadid to help it combat A2P SMS and flash call fraud.