The SAMENA Telecommunications Council – the industry body representing the telecoms sectors in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa – has called for stronger practical cooperation between the Arab region and Africa to invest and implement AI.

Pan-African telecoms firm Africell confirmed on Friday it has secured a US$99.6 million direct loan from the US Export-Import Bank (ExIm) primarily to enable the American-owned company to buy only US and European mobile network equipment.

Azerconnect’s international backbone operator AzerTelecom announced on Friday it has entered into a strategic partnership with DE-CIX to launch a new internet exchange in Azerbaijan.

South Africa-based Digital Parks Africa (DPA) says it’s expanding into West Africa with plans to develop a new carrier-neutral data centre in Nigeria in association with the Master Power Technologies Group.

Vodafone Idea has secured about US$3.5 billion in debt financing from a consortium led by State Bank of India (SBI), providing the Indian operator with funding to rebuild its network and compete with rivals Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel.

Liberty Business has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide Jamaican businesses and organisations with access to cloud services supported by local expertise and managed services.

Ethio Telecom revealed on Thursday it has held a stakeholders' workshop with Djibouti Telecom and Sudatel Group to push their planned Horizon Cross-Border Terrestrial Fiber Initiative into the pre-commercialisation phase.

The US Export-Import Bank is reportedly set to award pan-African telecoms firm Africell a loan worth US$100 million as part of a move by the Trump administration to discourage it from buying network equipment from Chinese vendors like Huawei and ZTE.

Saudi Arabian service provider and digital enabler stc Group, and Astranis, which builds advanced satellites for high orbits, have announced an agreement to deploy a dedicated satellite serving Saudi Arabia.

Mongolian broadband provider Mobinet is deploying Plume Design’s Plume Platform to power its mobihome broadband service.

The 15th ZTE Global Summit & User Congress officially opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, co-located for the first time with the GSMA M360 ASEAN.

The growing importance of mobile money in Sri Lanka is underlined by two recent announcements from leading operator Dialog Axiata relating to the remittance market and lifestyle retail.

Vietnamese operator VNPT has selected Israeli telecom software provider Radcom to provide service assurance for its roaming network, replacing its incumbent vendor following a competitive tender.

The installed base of fleet management systems in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Turkey will reach 12.5 million units by 2030. That’s the headline finding of a new report called Fleet Management in the Middle East.

Thailand-based holding company Gulf Development and Singaporean telecommunications conglomerate Singtel Group have announced a strategic partnership to develop new submarine cable connectivity between Thailand and Singapore.

Mobile operators in Asia Pacific are making progress on climate targets, but limited access to renewable electricity is slowing efforts to cut emissions, particularly in emerging markets, according to the GSMA.

Moldova’s national telecommunications operator Moldtelecom has completed a joint network optimisation project with intelligent operations provider Kenmei focused on improving 4G LTE performance and initial optimisation of Moldtelecom's 5G NSA C-band network.

Indonesia-based AI platform Zankore announced on Wednesday it has secured a senior term loan facility of up to US$3.1 billion to finance its planned deployment of Nvidia-powered AI infrastructure across Southeast Asia.

UAE-based data centre operator DAMAC Digital and Vodafone Türkiye have inaugurated the first phase of a new data centre in Izmir with an initial IT load capacity of 4MW and an investment of US$100 million.

Can AI boost sustainability and combat climate change? A recent memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Japanese technology giant NEC Corporation implies that it can.

The LuLu Coastal Cable System the Kenyan coast’s first fully protected coastal cable system, has been announced at this week’s ITW Africa digital infrastructure and connectivity event, held in Nairobi.

Philippine telecommunications operator PLDT, its mobile subsidiary Smart Communications, and technology giant NTT DoCoMo say they have conducted a green base station demonstration in the Philippines using renewable energy and DoCoMo's weather-forecast-linked lithium-ion battery control technology.

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has opened a consultation on a proposed standalone licence for colocation data centres, in a move aimed at providing greater regulatory clarity for the sector and supporting investment in digital infrastructure.

Vietnam is set to auction 900MHz spectrum freed up by the country's 2G shutdown, giving mobile operators access to additional low-frequency capacity for expanding 4G and 5G networks.

Digicel PNG and Vodafone PNG announced on Tuesday they have signed a tower sharing licence agreement that will enable both telcos to share tower infrastructure across Papua New Guinea.

Vodafone Business, Cassava Technologies and Elsewedy Electric signed an agreement on Tuesday to establish Africa Data Centers Egypt, a data centre project that will include Egypt's first sovereign AI data centre powered by Nvidia GPUs.

Algeria’s Ministry of Post and Telecommunications has announced the launch of plans to bring telecommunications services to 3,000 areas across the country, with a view to strengthening national coverage.

Key ASIC, a Malaysian semiconductor and energy-efficient ASIC design specialist, and CT Vision, an investment and green technology group, have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for a partnership to develop a large-scale, fully integrated green AI data centre (AIDC) complex in Malaysia.

Digital payment, digitisation, and FinAI solutions company Ant International has received a Payment Institution (PI) licence from the Central Bank of Brazil.

Veon-owned Ukrainian telco Kyivstar announced on Monday it has completed its migration of over 1 million 3G subscribers to 4G (with a few exceptions), which has freed up more spectrum capacity for its 4G network.

Papua New Guinea’s telecoms regulator announced on Friday that it’s ready to issue 5G spectrum licences in the 2.6 GHz and 3.5 GHz bands to "qualified" mobile operators.

Telkom Indonesia’s wholesale fibre spinoff InfraNexia revealed on Monday it has expanded its collaboration with telco XLSmart, who will use the company’s fibre network to boost connectivity in several of Indonesia's strategic corridors.

Data centre company HyperVault, a subsidiary of Indian technology group Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), says it has secured 264 acres of land to develop a large-scale AI data centre campus of up to 1GW capacity in Hyderabad.

Cloud and carrier-neutral data centre platform Digital Realty has announced the opening of the 6.4-megawatt (MW) Nairobi Two Data Centre (NBO2), expanding its Nairobi campus.