All Tech News

SC Ventures, Standard Chartered's innovation, fintech investment and ventures arm, has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Yabx, a firm aiming to enable the underserved with limited credit history to get fair access to financial services tailored to their needs.

Orange Madagascar has signed a ten-year Network-as-a-Service (NAAS) deal that will see infrastructure provider AMN Group deploy a minimum of 500 rural base stations across the country.

The initial phase of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)’s first open-access, carrier-neutral data centre - OADC Kinshasa; FIH1 - will go live in Q2 2023.

iColo, a Kenyan carrier-neutral data centre provider with campuses in Mombasa and Nairobi, says it has opened its first data centre in Mozambique.

The latest in what appears to be a long line of undersea cable problems affecting Vietnam in recent years has brought comment from the General Secretary of the Vietnam Internet Association, Vu The Binh, who says that Vietnam needs at least two to three more undersea cable routes in the next five years to meet growing demand.

As the developing world in particular copes with fast-expanding data demand, the arrival of a new prefabricated modular data centre solution aimed at customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) may be timely.

You might expect a major Indian 4G connectivity project to be awarded to one of India’s big mobile operators, However, RailTel, a PSU (Public Sector Undertaking or government-owned establishment) under the Ministry of Railways, was the recent winner of a State Bank of India (SBI) order to provide LTE connectivity for a large number of its ATMs.

Technology giant Oracle has announced plans to invest US$1.5 billion to meet cloud computing demand in Saudi Arabia.

Global analytics software provider FICO has partnered with FPG Technologies & Solutions to bring advanced decision management and analytics tools to companies across West Africa.

Most communications service providers (CSPs) have already started the journey towards becoming digital service providers (DSPs). But with the global economic downturn impacting budgets, how can operators keep digital transformation plans on track.

Kenyan broadband start-up Mawingu raised a total of US$9 million in a series B funding round to expand its operations to 25 counties in Kenya.

The CEO of Telecommunication Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTTP) has announced a major investment in fibre rollout across the island country.

Liquid Intelligent Technologies is deploying Nokia’s transport network technology in a new terrestrial fibre route connecting Mombasa, Kenya to Johannesburg, South Africa.

French Polynesian operator ONATi - a subsidiary of the OPT French Polynesia Group - has selected Intelia and Ciena to increase the capacity of the Honotua international submarine cable to 300Gb/s.

Operator Vodafone Oman and vendor Ericsson say they have carried out a successful test call that will pave the way for the commercial introduction of 5G standalone (SA) voice and data services for Vodafone subscribers in the Sultanate. 

India’s STL (Sterlite Technologies Limited) is divesting its support, monetisation, networking, and analytics solutions business to Skyvera.

Could the rollout of 5G services across India by operators be slowed without heavy investment in tower connectivity? That appears to be the question asked by ratings agency ICRA, which suggests that some three trillion rupees (about US$36.7 billion) will need to be spent over the next four to five years to fiberise towers.

State-owned Indian operator BSNL has apparently partnered Echelon Edge, a global information technology and system integration company. The aim? To set up private 5G networks.

Malaysian rural broadband service provider MEASAT has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Parcel365, an app-based platform that allows consumers and sellers to send and receive parcels 24/7.

YahClick, the data solutions subsidiary of UAE-headquartered satellite operator Al Yah Satellite Communications Company (Yahsat), has signed a US$15 million six-year strategic partnership agreement with Canar Telecommunication Co of Sudan, further expanding YahClick’s satellite broadband presence in Africa.

The government of the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) has embarked on a national fibre ring project that will connect to the Arcos-1 system.

Antel, the leading mobile operator in Uruguay, is working with VMware, a provider of multi-cloud services for all apps, for a use case-driven trial using the VMware Telco Cloud Platform to support a proof of concept (PoC).

India seems to have taken the self-sufficiency theme to another level with a home-grown mobile operating system developed at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. It’s called BharOS (Bhar is short for Bharat, or India).

Uzbekistan's state-owned operator Uzbektelecom has signed a new infrastructure agreement with four Japanese firms - Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ), NEC, NTT and Toyota Tsusho.

Electronic financial service ZainCash Iraq has announced the launch of Western Union international money transfer services through the ZainCash mobile application, enabling customers in Iraq to connect to more than 200 countries and territories.

Fintech provider Optasia is launching a microloan service in Guinea with pan-African Ecobank and MTN, via the latter’s MoMo (Mobile Money) service.

Mama Money, a South African fintech that offers cross-border money transfer and banking services, has partnered with AFC Commercial Bank, a market leader in Zimbabwe with a reliable and robust payout network.