Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications company OneWeb has confirmed the successful deployment and contact of 36 satellites launched by NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC-SHAR) in Sriharikota, India, on Sunday 26 March.

Dialog Enterprise, the corporate ICT solution arm of Sri Lankan service provider Dialog Axiata, in collaboration with the Rubber Research Institute of Sri Lanka & Dialog University of Moratuwa Research Laboratory, has devised an IoT-led implementation to assist local rubber plantations with the drying of crepe rubber.

China is in the news again – for positive reasons, this time, with the GSMA, the organisation representing mobile operators and organisations across the mobile ecosystem and adjacent industries, suggesting it will be the first country to reach one billion 5G connections.

Whale Cloud has signed a three-year BSS contract with Malaysia’s Sarawak Digital Economy Corporation (SDEC), a government-owned company entrusted to lead the implementation of Sarawak's Digital Economy initiatives.

PLDT stated there was no fraudulent activity in relation to its PHP48 billion (US$866 million) capex overspending last year, but profit fell in its full 2022 financial year due to the overrun.

A new internet exchange has been launched in Manila in the Philippines by two major players in ICT service provision and interconnection platforms.

WorldLink Communications, Nepal's largest private sector internet service provider (ISP), has received a series B investment of NRs 1.08 billion (about US$8.4 million) from British International Investment (BII), the UK government’s development finance institution and impact investor, and NRs 900 million (US$6.9 million) from Dolma Impact Fund II (DIF II).

Philippines-based Eastern Communications budgeted PHP1 billion (US$19.1 million) in capex to bolster operations on the islands of Visayas and Mindanao, and complete a subsea cable, reported Philstar.

FunP Innovation Group, a Taiwan-based digital advertising sales and advertising technology conglomerate, has reportedly secured US$3.12 million in additional investments to fuel a smart retail and cloud drive into the Indonesian market.

Rostelecom has reportedly reconsidered selling its Armenian subsidiary GNC-Alfa, and plans to invest and broaden the unit. 

PLDT subsidiaries Smart Communications and Digital Mobile Philippines struck a sale and leaseback deal with Frontier Tower Associates Philippines, for 1,012 sites worth PHP12.1 billion (US$220.7 million), continuing its tower sale strategy. 

China's Sunwalk Group intends to invest US$2 billion in Pakistan's telecoms sector for the deployment of an optical fibre network that will eventually cover an area of 100,000 kilometres, according to a number of reports.

Satellite manufacturer and internet service provider mu Space and Advanced Technology has reached an exclusive deal with OneWeb, a global communications network powered by a constellation of 648 low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, to provide LEO connectivity solutions across mainland Southeast Asia.

Malaysian satellite operator MEASAT has selected Hughes’ Jupiter System ground platform to enable broadband services on the MEASAT-3d High-Throughput Satellite (HTS).

Malaysian content and entertainment company Astro has chosen Airties, a supplier of managed Wi-Fi solutions for service providers globally, to deliver a portfolio of smart Wi-Fi software and services to support broadband subscribers across its fibre footprint in Malaysia.

With 5G rollout well under way in much of the country, an Indian industry group has suggested that most telecom towers still need fiberisation, a vast number still need to be deployed and that recent amended Right of Way (RoW) rules are not being met by some Indian states.

Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) gave satellite company Globalstar permission to operate a new ground station, enabling it to sell mobile satellite services throughout the southeast Asian country.

Telekom Malaysia (TM) and Chinese vendor ZTE partnered up to build a hybrid cloud 5G core network, a move designed to deliver new technologies and applications.

Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE), a consortium of Asian telecommunications carriers managing the ASE cable system, is working with networking systems, services, and software group Ciena to improve the design capacity and sustainability of its cable system.

The next decade will see continuing challenges in the area of core network evolution with significant changes coming down the line as core networks evolve towards next-generation architectures and platforms, says Richard Liu, President of Huawei’s Cloud Core Network Product Line.

Several years of sustained investment in data storage solutions coupled with continuous innovation and significant improvements in vision and execution, mean that Huawei can boast a full set of storage products that ranks it among the market leaders in terms of product competitiveness.

Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (Indosat) president director and CEO Vikram Sinha (pictured) said the operator proved doubters of its US$6 billion mega-merger wrong, and the company is poised to achieve growth in Indonesia.

Malaysian operator CelcomDigi Berhad (CelcomDigi) and South Korean operator SK Telecom have sealed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to explore and develop Malaysia’s first operator-led mobile metaverse platform. The MoU was signed at MWC 2023.

Vietnam’s MobiFone has signed a 5G cooperation agreement with Nokia at MWC 2023.

MWC 2023 may almost be over but  there’s still time for at least one more major show announcement involving giant vendor Nokia – this time with Indonesian telecommunications provider Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH).

Indonesia’s Telkomsel is boosting its collaboration with ZTE, with the two parties signing an MoU at Mobile World Congress 2023 that will see them jointly develop enterprise 5G services.