All Tech News

Orange Money is launching in Morocco.

Syniverse has signed a new indirect channel partner, CPA Ferrere, to sell its Syniverse Mobile Engagement suite of services to companies in the agribusiness, financial, public and healthcare sectors in South America.

Indian operator Bharti Airtel has announced plans to collaborate with technology company Cisco to launch what Cisco calls India’s largest 5G-ready, 100G IP and optical integrated network designed to enhance network availability, capacity and scale.

The government of Côte d'Ivoire is seeking to increase the usage of mobile banking in the country by allowing interoperability between different digital financial services.

Inadequate rural coverage is often a problem in African markets but Liberia’s House of Representatives has now asked the country’s Post and Telecommunication Committee to launch an investigation into the issue – and the country’s two leading operators in particular. 

Ooredoo, the international communications company operating across the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia, has signed a deal with Huawei that will cover its networks in Kuwait, Oman, Indonesia, Tunisia and the Maldives.

Consulting and investment company SUB.CO has announced that its Oman Australia Cable (OAC) project has entered contract in force (CIF) status, with its final system connection expected to be completed in December 2021.

Interesting news on the success or otherwise of attempts to bridge the digital divide comes from a new GSMA study that finds that the mobile internet gender gap has narrowed – but the gap is still a big one.

Senegalese operator Expresso Telecom has switched on its 4G network and will begin providing commercial services on 31^st March.

Batelco and Aptilo Networks have entered into a partnership to deliver business-to-business (B2B) or (B2B2C) Wi-Fi services in Bahrain.

Actis, an investor of private capital into global emerging markets, has announced that it has acquired a majority stake in Rack Centre, a Nigerian provider of data centre colocation and cloud services.

Cameroon has ordered MTN and Orange to implement ID checks for all parties involved in mobile money transactions, after it emerged that ransom payments had been made using their transfer services.

Saudi operator Mobily has signed a deal with Nokia for next-generation telecom technologies.

According to a recent press release from A1 Belarus the operator has begun work on launching voice and data mobile communications at all new stations on the Minsk metro, as well as along the lines connecting them.

Ericsson’s 2019 annual report seems to have confirmed what many people suspect – that 5G deployment in India will be delayed due to spectrum allocation-related constraints in the market.

India’s Vodafone Idea has launched a new pilot deployment of cloud-native Optiva Charging Engine on its Universal Cloud.

Internet services group Rakuten and telecoms and technology service provider Vodafone have become the lead investors in a satellite venture that aims to extend mobile coverage to more people and devices across the planet.

The DARE1 consortium has landed cables in Somalia’s two largest coastal cities, Mogadishu and Bosaso.

Internet para Todos Perú (IpT Peru) has partnered with Parallel Wireless to deploy hundreds of programmable virtualised 4G OpenRAN sites for mobile broadband.

Expanded internet access is coming to rural customers throughout Mexico over the next three years thanks to thousands of new Wi-Fi hotspots.

India has given Apple the go-ahead to open branded retail outlets in the market, with the US firm planning a launch in 2021.

A Rwandan data centre that hosts servers related to the country’s government has been brought offline by hackers.

Pioneering South African operator Rain, which launched a 5G service late last year, has now launched a new payment product, called the Standard Plan, which offers subscribers an uncapped 30Mbps service for R699 (about $44.75) per month.

Orange, a multi-service telecommunications operator present in 18 countries in Africa, will be the first operator to adopt the O3b mPOWER  from SES, a next-generation medium earth orbit (MEO) satellite communications system, starting in the Central African Republic.

A new open-access agreement has been signed by six broadband providers in Saudi Arabia.

In the mobile broadband data era it is forecast that over 80% of traffic will occur in indoor locations creating demand for new indoor coverage solutions.

The Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA) has partnered with tower firm K-Net to deliver connectivity to one of the country’s more remote regions.

Huawei has launched new a new range of OceanStor 5G-Era storage solutions designed to help carriers and enterprises cope with the explosive growth of mass data in the 5G era.

Turkcell has selected Mavenir to test and deploy OpenRAN vRAN within its home market.

Indonesia is the latest country to introduce a Sigfox IoT network, with the recent official launch by Sigfox Indonesia of what it calls its 0G network for IoT operation in the country.

Recent 5G coverage has reported launch activity in Thailand, Tajikistan and Croatia, though what constitutes a launch may be up for debate; a couple of 5G debuts are concentrated in a relatively small area.