All Tech News

African digital payments company DPO Group has announced the introduction of a new form of payment that will allow merchants to get paid by their customers via a USSD code. This new feature, says DPO, allows merchants to receive payments from customers who don’t have access to mobile banking or a payment card.

MTN Mobile Money Uganda Limited and Jumo, a technology company building next-generation financial services for emerging markets, have launched MoSente, a new service that allows MTN customers to access credit facilities.

A ‘green’ high-speed underwater backbone communication network is coming to Brazil’s Amazon River thanks to a partnership between Seja Digital, a non-governmental, non-profit institution created by regulator Anatel, and HMN Tech, a provider of turnkey submarine network solutions.

WIOCC has landed Google’s Equiano subsea cable in Lagos, Nigeria.

France-based Sigfox has secured a buyer for its operations in the form of fellow IoT communications service provider Unabiz for an undisclosed fee, as the bankrupt company looked to protect its assets. 

Telebirr, a mobile payment and digital wallet service launched by Ethiopia’s state-owned operator Ethio Telecom in May 2021, has reached over 17.6 million subscribers with a cumulative transaction value of 12.58 billion birr (about $245.2 million) to date.

Princeton Digital Group (PDG), a leading developer and operator of internet infrastructure headquartered in Singapore, and the Indonesian Internet Service Provider Association (APJII), which supports internet development in Indonesia, have announced a collaboration to boost Indonesia's internet infrastructure.

STC, Nokia and MediaTek have revealed a joint effort to verify 3 Component Carrier Aggregation (3CC-CA) in a 5G standalone network for the first time in the Middle East, a method to optimally combine spectrum assets to enhance 5G experiences.  

PP Telecommunication (PPTEL), a leading network service provider based in Sarawak in Malaysia, has selected Juniper Networks, which describes itself as a leader in secure, AI-driven networks, to provide solutions to build a new core network that will support its growth plans.

Indian data centre growth – or proposals for such growth – continues. Late last week saw the news that Indian data management specialist VueNow is, according to local press reports, proposing to build dozens of edge data centres across the Indian state of Bihar, although this proposal is as yet some way from the approval stage.

Smartphone brand Infinix has launched the Infinix Wallet, a digital wallet app co-developed with mobile financial services platform PalmPay. The aim of the app is to provide a seamless digital financial experience to users across emerging market economies, starting with a number of African markets.

Viettel Group has announced the international Asia Direct Cable (ADC) is now connecting Vietnam, a subsea cable state-owned operator has invested in.

As part of the operator’s wide-ranging network upgrade, Nokia will deploy its XGS-PON equipment for Cable Bahamas (REV)’s new fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network.

Broadband internet via satellite is coming to 500 rural communities in Mexico thanks to Spanish telecommunications satellite operator Hispasat and Mexican internet service provider GlobalSat.

Digital infrastructure services provider Summit Digitel has announced that it has signed an agreement with Indian operator Bharti Airtel to provide its tower infrastructure for Airtel’s wireless network rollouts.

Parallel Wireless is conducting an Open RAN field trial over the 2600MHz band in Brazil, in partnership with local operators and organisations.

Batelco and Ericsson have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on next-generation 5G technologies.

The 2Africa subsea cable consortium, comprised of China Mobile International, Meta, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, STC, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC, has announced the first landing of the 2Africa cable – in Genoa, Italy.

The rapid growth of mobile money-based services continues. Ooredoo Money Services, part of Qatar-headquartered operator Ooredoo, has announced a partnership with Thunes, a global payment services platform based in Singapore, to provide instant money transfers to multiple mobile wallets internationally.

In a major boost for the TETRA radio standard, MacroAsia Corporation (MAC), a leading provider of aviation-related support services in the Philippines, says it has relied on Teltronic, a designer and manufacturer of mission-critical radio communications, to deploy a TETRA communication system that services six airports in the country.

Google’s Equiano subsea cable system will connect Nigeria this month (April) a move that is expected to boost broadband speeds for the country and its neighbours fivefold.

Global communications company Viasat and Batelco, the leading digital solutions provider in Bahrain, have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to engage in several regional business-to-business (B2B) service opportunities.

Two of the world’s biggest names in digital payments have announced major agreements in significant African markets: Visa in Egypt with operator Orange Egypt and Mastercard in Kenya with digital payment solution provider PesaLink.

Apple has made India the latest location for the manufacturing of its flagship iPhone 13 as the company aims to shift its manufacturing reliance away from China, reported Reuters.  

Remittances are back in the headlines with news of a recently announced partnership that is targeting Zimbabweans who want to transfer funds from the UK to South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Australian off-grid edge data centre operator Edge Centres has announced that it has begun building its first facility outside Australia and has more planned.

Next-generation broadband satellite operator, Kacific says it has introduced Asia-Pacific’s first HTS (high throughout satellite) Ka-band enterprise backup service, which is described as a service that protects organisations against outages that, it says, happen all too frequently.

MTN’s Nigeria business – which constitutes its largest market in Africa – has been very much in the news in recent days, mainly thanks to the approval by the Central Bank of Nigeria of a licence for MTN's Mobile Money (MoMo) Payment Service Bank in the country.

Operator Telma Madagascar and vendor Ericsson say they have deployed Ericsson’s Radio 6626 three-sector dual-band radio across five major sites in Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo.

Celcom Axiata, Digi Telecommunications, Maxis and U Mobile have confirmed that they are in continued discussions with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) over the terms of access to the country’s wholesale 5G network.

Philippines-based Alliance Towers revealed it will cut back on its targeted 500 tower build-out plan down to 200 this year due to the pandemic.

The combined industrial revenue of China's telecommunications sector rose 9% year-on-year to 258.6 billion yuan ($40.72 billion), a pace 3.2 percentage points faster than the same period last year, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).