Turkcell made moves at Mobile World Congress 2026 this week to beef up its planned 5G network, deploy AI in its mobile core and get started on 6G via separate deals with Ericsson and Mavenir.

Pan-African (and formerly Middle Eastern) operator MTN is finally leaving Syria and, it seems, a replacement is already being lined up.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) announced at Mobile World Congress 2026 on Monday that Saudi telco Mobily and Qatar-based Ooredoo Group have made fresh pledges for its Partner2Connect Digital Coalition to bridge the digital divide, bringing total commitments to the coalition to over US$82 billion.

Red Hat, a leading provider of open source solutions, has announced during MWC that operator Vodafone Oman is further advancing its digital transformation by standardising its IT infrastructure on Red Hat’s cloud-native platform.

e& UAE, the flagship telecom arm of global technology company e&, has announced at MWC26 that it has selected BroadForward's Security Edge Protection Proxy (SEPP) to enhance the security of its 5G and international roaming capabilities.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced service disruptions in one of its Availability Zones in the UAE on Sunday when a data centre lost power after catching fire, possibly due to Iranian air strikes in Dubai.

The global smartphone market is forecast to decline by 13% in 2026, as a prolonged memory chip shortage weighs heavily on production and margins, according to analyst house IDC.

Bahrain-headquartered technology company Beyon Group has been selection by the Kuwait Authority for Partnership Projects (KAPP) as the winning investor for the Fixed Telecommunications Network Development Project in Kuwait.

InterDigital and Turk Telekom said on Monday they have implemented a collaborative cellular and Wi-Fi sensing solution that they say will pave the way towards creating intelligent, sensing-enabled 6G networks.

Nokia announced on Tuesday it is collaborating with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to showcase its agentic AI-powered 5G-Advanced network slicing solution on live networks, starting with telcos du and Orange, at Mobile World Congress 2026.

MoneyHash, a payment orchestration platform built for emerging and global markets, has announced a new partnership with Wayl, a local payment solutions provider, checkout engine, and merchant of record supporting global and regional businesses entering the Iraqi market.

The GSMA launched a new innovation fund on Monday to support small enterprises that use mobile and digital technologies to transition to green practices in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

The Kuwait Authority for Partnership Projects (KAPP) has reportedly secured conditional approval from the State Audit Bureau (SAB) to award a KWD19.9 million (US$64.8 million) contract for a project to modernise Kuwait’s fixed-line telecoms infrastructure.

Telecommunications technology giant Ericsson and Mastercard, a global technology company in the payments industry, have announced a collaboration they claim can reshape how money moves across the world – beginning with the Middle East and Africa.

Qatar’s Ooredoo Group announced on Monday it is carving out a new independent company, Ooredoo Fibre Networks (OFN), that will focus on managing and scaling Ooredoo’s international connectivity and subsea cable infrastructure.

Nokia has reportedly signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iraqi technology and infrastructure investment group T964 to modernise Iraq’s telecoms and digital infrastructure.

Virgin Mobile Kuwait by Connect Arabia WLL says it has partnered with Kidzonet to launch a new SIM solution that promises safer digital access for children than traditional parental controls by screening content at the network level.

Du Pay, the digital financial services arm of UAE-based telco du, says it is collaborating with Nepalese digital remittance firm Esewa Money Transfer to promote cross-border payments to Nepalese expats in the UAE.

e& Carrier & Wholesale and TNS Global announced on Wednesday that they are partnering to launch a new high-performance connectivity corridor between Kazakhstan and the UAE.

UAE-based telco du said on Thursday it is partnering with Cyprus-based independent subsea infrastructure provider Datawave Networks to land the latter’s Singapore-India-Gulf (SING) subsea cable system in the UAE.

Sparkle revealed on Wednesday it has signed deals with Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) and Elettra to build its planned GreenMed subsea cable connecting the Middle East and the Balkans to Italy via the Adriatic Sea.

Colt Technology Services revealed plans on Monday to strengthen its business in the Middle East to meet what it calls “a surge in growth opportunities” in the region driven by cloud adoption, AI investment, digital transformation and financial market growth.

Payment giant Mastercard and the UAE Cyber Security Council (CSC) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to strengthen trust in the nation’s digital ecosystem.

Comarch, Hatif Libya, and Makman Technology Consulting have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) defining the next phase of their strategic cooperation in the area of autonomous networks.

Recent data centre news from the Middle East and North Africa includes announcements from the UAE and Tunisia that, as so often recently, focus on energy efficiency.

The Egyptian government has struck a US$3.5 billion agreement with the country’s four mobile operators to double their existing spectrum holdings, in a move designed to underpin future digital transformation and next-generation services.

Japan’s NTT Data announced on Monday it has struck a deal to buy UAE-based regional cloud consultancy Zero&One, which it says will strengthen its cloud capabilities in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region.

Saudi Arabian telco stc Group announced on Sunday it has signed a deal to build the Syrian government’s SAR 3 billion (US$800 million) Silklink project that aims to boost Syria’s optical fibre infrastructure and create a regional internet hub.