Twist, a fast-growing digital entertainment platform in MENA, has renewed its partnership with Tuned Global, the leading B2B music technology platform, for another three years. This collaboration powers the next phase of Twist Music, building on its success in Egypt and enabling expansion into the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia (KSA).

Twist maintains a strong alliance with E& — one of the largest telecom operators in the
Middle East and Africa — offering seamless bundled music experiences to its customer
base while also serving the wider market with hassle-free music access.

As a key part of the Egyptian digital lifestyle portfolio, Twist plays a strategic role in
delivering engaging entertainment experiences to millions of users. With this renewed
partnership, Twist aims to broaden its regional footprint and strengthen its music
streaming capabilities through Tuned Global’s robust technology infrastructure.
The Twist Music app — already downloaded [3 million times] — is available with special
privileges to E& users over mobile plans or through standalone subscription at a very
competitive price addressing the whole market.

It provides users with an extensive catalogue of Arabic and international music, featuring content from major labels and leading independents like Believe, powered by Tuned Global’s content management and rights solutions.

Ahmed Yehia, CEO of Fintech & Digital Lifestyle at E&; Egypt, said:
“Through our support of the renewed Twist partnership with Tuned Global, we’ve
fast-tracked the development of Twist Music and expanded into exciting new
markets. This renewed collaboration ensures we continue to deliver a world-class
platform that blends international catalogue depth with the local content our
customers love.”

Con Raso, Managing Director of Tuned Global, added:
“We’re proud to support Twist in enhancing its music offering and driving
regional growth. Our technology enables entertainment platforms like Twist to
focus on user experience, while we deliver the infrastructure and innovation
behind a scalable and future-ready music service.”

About Twist Music
Launched in 2022, Twist Music combines all commercial music tastes in a culturally aware, ad-free streaming experience. Tuned Global’s algorithms ensure users receive personalized
recommendations that reflect local tastes and values.

Premium features include offline listening, podcasts, broadcast radio, lyrics, Car-play and Echo for sound recognition, tapping into users' engaging features like loyalty coins and twist starts program supporting young talents — all delivered via Tuned Global’s turnkey platform.

In 2022, Twist overhauled its backend using Tuned Global’s 500+ advanced APIs, enabling
faster development, greater platform stability, and new features like Arabic search and improved metadata pipelines for local content. The result is a more seamless and responsive user experience tailored to regional audiences.

Twist Music sits within the digital entertainment ecosystem, which brings together music, VOD, gaming, and sports under one umbrella. By bundling content with telecom services, Twist offers users more value while giving e& a strong competitive advantage in the regional market.

Looking ahead, Twist is exploring new innovations with Tuned Global, including programmatic radio, AutoMix for seamless playlist transitions and AI recommendation tools for advanced personalized music experiences.

About Tuned Global

Tuned Global is the leading data-driven cloud and software platform that empowers businesses to integrate commercial music into their apps or launch complete streaming experiences using advanced APIs, real-time analytics, licensing solutions, and customisable white-label apps.

Our turnkey solutions for music, audio, and video — coupled with a broad ecosystem of third-party music tech integrations — make us the most comprehensive platform for powering any digital music project. We streamline complexities in licensing, rights management, and content delivery, enabling rapid innovation and bringing new ideas to life.
Tuned Global has extensive experience supporting telecom operators and MVNOs worldwide, including True Digital Group in Thailand, Tusass in Greenland, and Gabb in the US.

Telcos choose Tuned Global’s cloud music platform because it allows them to launch innovative branded music experiences quickly, at a fraction of the cost of owning the whole infrastructure, while integrating seamlessly with billing and bundling systems. This enables operators to focus on their core business and customer engagement while relying on Tuned Global’s music industry expertise to deliver a scalable, rights-compliant and future-ready music service.

Since 2011, we’ve supported 40+ companies in 70+ countries — across telecom, fitness,
media, aviation, and more — to deliver innovative music experiences faster and more cost-
effectively. For more information, visit http://www.tunedglobal.com.

News

Phreeli, pronounced “freely”, only requires a ZIP code for sign-up, aiming to entice privacy-conscious customers

This month saw the commercial launch of Phreeli, a company its founders describe as the world’s first privacy-by-design mobile carrier.

The company, which operates as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) on T‑Mobile’s network, is seeking to differentiate itself by minimising personal data collection and pledging never to sell call or location data. This ethos extends to customer sign-up, requring only a customer ZIP code to activate services.

At the centre of Phreeli’s offering is a proprietary encryption architecture the company calls Double‑Blind Armadillo, which uses zero‑knowledge cryptography to separate identity information, payment details and phone numbers into isolated systems so that no single database can link a user’s identity to their communications.

Payments, which can be made in conventional means but also via some cryptocurrency, are also isolated from phone number assignment through cryptographic tokens, so that the billing system itself does not know which number it is paying for.

Phreeli was fouded by 2019 by Nicholas Merrill, a man for whom consumer privacy is a deeply personal issue. While working at an internet service provider name Calyx in 2004, Merrill was presented with anFBI National Security Letter (NSL) under the USA Patriot Act, demanding the handover of user data and an accompanying gag order. Merrill refused to comply, challenging the legality of the order. The gag order was only fully lifted in 2015.

Following this experience, Merrill has advocated for consumers handing less of their private data to corporations, suggesting that the solution can be tackled “at the front end”.

“If you don’t provide data, it can’t be lost or sold,” he said.

Merrill and the company acknowledge the risk of abuse that any anonymity tool can bring, and say Phreeli will use rate limiting, fraud detection, and account suspension to combat spam, scams, and other malicious uses of the company’s service, without resortng to mass surveillance.

“We should not allow society to be monitored for 0.1% of criminal acts,” Merrill told Wired in an interview, likening the situation to that of using a typical pay phone. “We’re not looking to cater to people doing bad things. We’re trying to help people feel more comfortable living their normal lives.”

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News

The FCC has approved AT&T’s $1.02 billion spectrum acquisition from UScellular on the condition that the company terminates its DEI initiatives, amid concerns over industry consolidation and its impact on rural connectivity and competition.

The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T’s $1.02 billion purchase of spectrum licenses from UScellular, conditional on AT&T’s formal commitment to end its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programmes.

According to the FCC, the acquisition, which transfers 1,250 million MHz-Pops of 3.45 GHz and 331 million MHz-Pops of 700 MHz B/C block licenses, will enhance AT&T’s network coverage, capacity and performance and thus improve the customer experience.

AT&T notified the FCC in a letter that it will terminate DEI activities as part of the conditions tied to the transaction, a move the company said was necessary to obtain regulatory approval. Industry reporting and the FCC statement place this decision squarely within the commission’s recent practice under Chair Brendan Carr of making cessation of DEI programmes a term of certain approvals.

The Rural Wireless Association opposed the deal, arguing it risks further consolidation and could harm competition and roaming options for rural consumers, potentially raising prices for wireless plans. The FCC acknowledged these concerns but concluded the net effect would be to strengthen AT&T’s network performance for customers.

The AT&T transaction follows a broader pattern in which major carriers have agreed to end DEI initiatives to secure FCC clearance: T‑Mobile ended DEI programmes while seeking approval for its purchases of much of UScellular’s retail operations and customers, and Verizon made similar concessions in its approval to acquire Frontier Communications’ assets.

UScellular’s investor release confirms the company has monetised a significant portion of spectrum excluded from earlier transactions with other bidders, and FCC filings provide the regulatory context by mapping MHz‑POP holdings across carriers, data used to assess concentration and potential competitive impacts.

The move is the second largescale spectrum purchase for AT&T this year, after the operator bought low-band and mid-band spectrum from EchoStar earlier this year fr $23 billion s

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News

BT has unveiled a new “sovereign platform” designed to give UK businesses and public bodies greater control over their networks, data, and emerging services such as cloud-hosted applications and AI.

The platform, announced on Monday, consolidates a suite of services that BT says will be delivered from UK-based infrastructure and supported only by staff located in the UK.

The company frames the move as a response to growing geopolitical uncertainty and a rising demand from organisations for stronger assurances over where their systems, operations, and data are controlled.

Jon James, chief executive of BT Business, described the initiative as central to adoption of new technologies.

“Sovereignty isn’t simply a matter of compliance or risk management – it’s key to unleashing the potential of AI, and ensuring resilient operations in an increasingly uncertain world,” he said. “Our pioneering launch reflects BT’s unique position as the digital backbone of the UK, and the only provider with the scale, capabilities and experience to enable true UK sovereign solutions.”

BT said the platform will underpin the phased rollout of new sovereign-branded voice, cloud and AI services “over the coming months” and that a sovereign option for a range of existing core products will be available through BT Business in the first half of 2026. The company emphasised its existing experience delivering secure services to critical public and private sector organisations and positioned the platform as a way for customers to choose levels of “sovereignty” appropriate to their needs.

The announcement comes as the UK government pushes an AI strategy focussed on the rapid growth of the country’s domestic data centre industry. BT is notably a founding member of the UK Sovereign AI Industry Forum helping to align the UK telecoms industy with this national objectives.

Industry observers say sovereign offerings are increasingly common as firms and governments seek to reduce exposure to foreign jurisdictional risk, protect sensitive information and meet tightening regulatory expectations. Critics, however, warn that claims of “sovereignty” can mask practical trade-offs , such as higher costs, reduced choice of suppliers and potential delays in accessing the latest global technologies , and that true technological independence is difficult to achieve in an interconnected global market.

BT has not published detailed technical specifications or pricing for the new platform. Customers and procurement teams will be watching for clarifications on data residency guarantees, auditability, third-party software components and whether services will be certified to government security standards such as Cyber Essentials or the UK’s upcoming standards for sovereign AI.

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News

The shares, purchased from the Kenyan government and Vodacom’s parent company Vodafone, give it a 55% stake in the business

This week, South Africa telecoms giant Vodacom has announced a deal to increase its stake in Kenya’s Safaricom to 55%, in a deal worth $2.1 billion.

The deal would see Vodacom acquire a 15% stake in the business from the Kenyan government and a further 5% stake from its parent company Vodafone.

Acquiring a controlling stake in Safaricom is part of Vodacom’s wider Vision2030 strategy, which aims to see the company grow its subscriber base to 260 million and greatly expand the company’s digital and financial service offerings by the end of the decade.

Safaricom is the largest mobile operator in Kenya, with around 50 million customers. In 2022, the company led a consortium to build a second national operator in Ethiopia, which has since gained around 10 million subscribers.

“This landmark transaction will mark a pivotal step in Vodacom’s journey to accelerate growth and deepen our impact across Africa,” said Vodacom Group CEO, Shameel Joosub. “Acquiring a controlling stake in Safaricom strengthens our position as a market leader, while at the same time unlocks new opportunities to drive digital and financial inclusion at scale in Kenya and Ethiopia.”

The deal is subject to typical regulatory approvals.

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Interview

At Connected Britain 2025, we caught up with Incognito Software Systems’ Sonya Goodanetz to discuss how speed alone is no longer enough for consumers

“Customers don’t buy technology. They buy products and services. You’ve got fibre and you’ve got speed – now what?”

Far from a rhetorical question, this is a major challenge facing ISPs in the UK, where strong competition is leaving providers struggling to attract and retain customers.

Speaking at Connected Britain 2025, Incognito Software Systems’ Senior Marketing Product Manager Sonya Goodanetz highlighted the rapid growth of value-added services (VAS) boosting average revenue per user (ARPU).

“We’re seeing a lot of competitive differentiation strategies, especially around value-added services,” she explained, highlighting cybersecurity offerings and traffic prioritisation for services like cloud gaming, as key areas for growth. “It’s about end-to-end quality of experience.”

Thanks to the latest technology, implementing VAS at scale is now quicker and easier than ever.

“Previously you’d put an agent on a device, test every make and model, and push it to market. By then, a year has passed and you’re starting all over again,” she explained. “The game has changed now. Being able to deploy apps onto residential gateways immediately delivers these value-added services.”

It’s imperative, Goodanetz says, that ISPs go beyond being “just a pipe” and gain a foothold into new verticals, whether that is healthcare or consumer IoT within the connected home.

Check out our full interview below:

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News

Onlookers fear the app could pose a significant threat to user privacy

Back in January, the Indian government launched its cybersecurity app Sanchar Saathi, aiming to tackle the growing challenge of mobile security and fraud.

Now, the government has scrapped an order that would have seen this app pre-installed on every mobile device sold in India.

On Monday, the government announced a new order that would give smartphone makers 90 days to ensure all devices have the Sanchar Saathi app embedded at the point of sale. For mobile phones already in shops but not yet sold, the government wants software updates to install the app within three months.

Now, after significant push back from cybersecurity experts and device manufacturers like Apple and Samsung, the government says it will no longer require pre-installation.

The Sanchar Saathi app – which means ‘communication partner’ in Hindi – is used to track lost or stolen phones and identify fraudulent mobile usage.

According to India’s Minister of Communications Jyotiraditya Scindia, the app has already delivered “strong citizen benefits” since its launch in January. These include 26 lakh (2.6 million) mobile phones traced and 7.23 lakh (723,000) successfully returned to their owners; 40.96 lakh (4.09 million) fraudulent mobile connections identified and disconnected based on citizen reports; and 6.2 lakh (620,000) fraud-linked IMEIs (International Mobile Equipment Identities) blocked to curb misuse.

To achieve this, however, the app reportedly requires permission to access phone calls, messages, call and message logs, photos, files, and the phone’s camera. These functionalities “cannot be disabled or restricted”, according to the order.

As such, watchdogs fear that the app represents a major threat to personal privacy and could ultimately be used by the government to monitor many different types of user activity, from the use of banned applications to VPNs.

“The problems deepen when we look at the scope and safeguards. The order invokes ‘telecom cyber security’ as a catch-all justification, but it does not define the functional perimeter of the app,” explained Apar Gupta, founder director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, to The Telegraph Online.

He added that there was a significant risk of ‘function creep’, where solutions evolve far beyond the scope of their original intent.

In response to this criticism, Scindia clarified earlier this week that users would be able to delete the pre-installed Sanchar Saathi app.

“There is no snooping and no call monitoring. If you want #SancharSaathiApp, keep it. The choice to activate, keep, or delete the app rests entirely with the user,” he said in a post on X (Twitter).

This reassurance, however, has seemingly done little to stem the criticism facing the government.

Most significantly, reports suggest that both Apple and Samsung were resistant to the order, with Apple telling Reuters it would not comply and “would convey its concerns to Delhi”.

Government apps being preinstalled on consumer devices is far from the norm; the only major markets where this is routinely practiced are China and Russia.

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News

The LLM will be carefully trained on Ukrainian data in an attempt to avoid undue Russian influence

Kyivstar and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation have chosen Google’s Gemma model and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI to form the technical backbone of a national large language model (LLM) intended to capture the breadth of Ukrainian dialects, terminology, and history.

The project, announced today, will be operationally led by Kyivstar, the country’s largest mobile operator and a unit of telecoms group VEON.

Kyivstar and the WINWIN AI Centre of Excellence at the Digital Ministry said the model will be trained on curated Ukrainian datasets and will keep sensitive national data stored and processed within Ukraine, an explicit priority for future use in government, healthcare, and financial services.

“We are building the Ukrainian LLM on a ready-made open-source model. The main task in development is to train it on our unique data further. When choosing a model, we focused on how well it already handles Ukrainian-language texts and how controllable it is during additional training. This will help minimize linguistic and ethical risks in our LLM,” said Danylo Tsvok, Chief AI Officer at the Ministry of Digital Transformation and CEO of the WINWIN AI Center of Excellence.

Google’s Gemma was selected after an “extensive evaluation”, the partners said. Google Cloud’s Vertex AI will provide the computing infrastructure for large-scale training. Krzysztof Kaziów, Director Customer Engineering CEE at Google Cloud, commented: “We are honored that the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Kyivstar have selected Gemma as the foundation for the Ukrainian national LLM. This choice underscores Gemma’s strategic value, offering an optimal balance between performance and resources alongside its strong multilingual support. Leveraging its proven success as the base for leading Ukrainian LLMs, we are committed to supporting this vital initiative to enhance digital experience in Ukraine.”

VEON described the project as part of a broader strategy to develop local-language AI across its markets, pointing to prior initiatives such as KazLLM in Kazakhstan and an Urdu LLM in Pakistan. “Kyivstar and the Ukrainian Digital Ministry have taken a major step forward today. With a sovereign Ukrainian LLM, Ukrainian consumers, businesses and government institutions will be empowered to integrate cutting-edge technologies using augmented intelligence that truly speaks Ukrainian and understands Ukraine,” said Kaan Terzioglu, CEO of VEON Group. “We have a responsibility to bring the benefits of augmented intelligence to the countries we serve , through large language models trained not only on words, but on local context.”

Technical work will include optimising Gemma for Ukrainian, refining its tokenizer, and creating benchmarks for fine-tuning and application-specific adaptation. Intended use cases span regulatory and legal analysis, education, finance and healthcare.

While not explicitly stated by the partners, project’s cultural significance for Ukraine should not be understated. Much of the data used to train existing Ukrainian LLMs was produced under substantial Russian influence, leading to significant bias. A domestically-led LLM could correct this influence, creating a model that better represents Ukrainian linguistic, historical, and civic perspectives.

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News

Vodafone says the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office) has not followed key procedural rules in its investigation and has acted with bias

Vodafone has formally challenged the Bundeskartellamt over its investigation into the operator’s alleged anti-competitive behaviour towards rival 1&1. The conflict centres on Vodafone’s supposed obstruction of 1&1’s efforts to build its own 5G network, a move crucial for establishing the company as the country’s fourth major mobile network operator.

1&1 Drillisch won 5G mobile spectrum at auction back in 2019 with the intention of building out its own network and becoming Germany’s fourth national operator. By 2021, 1&1 had signed a deal with Vantage Towers (in which Vodafone holds a 50% stake) to access up to 5,000 of the towerco’s existing mobile sites, allowing them to more rapidly deploy their burgeoning 5G network.

The contract specified that 3,800 sites were to be made available by 2025.

By the end of 2022, however, it was becoming clear that access to this may sites by 2025 would be unlikely, with 1&1 saying it had been granted access to just five sites. In 2023, 1&1 formally complained to the Bundeskartellamt , who subsequently launched an investigation into the source of Vantage’s delays in providing the agreed upon infrastructure.

Now, Vodafone is claiming that the Bundeskartellamt is conducting proceedings in a biased and procedurally improper manner, exceeding its authority. Vodafone has sought interim legal relief at the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf, arguing that the accusations lack substantive merit and that 1&1 has unduly influenced the investigation.

“I’ve never encountered anything like this in my more than 25 years of professional experience,” said Vodafone’s lawyer, Walther Graf, who provided a 65-page letter to the Bundeskartellamt with the allegations.

The Bundeskar­tellamt, however, insists that it is conducting its investigations impartially. It noted that its president, Andreas Mundt, maintains regular contacts with all relevant industry leaders, including both 1&1’s CEO Ralph Dommermuth and Vodafone’s executives. The authority dismisses Vodafone’s claims of partiality and unusual procedural conduct as unfounded.

1&1 has also denied any improper coordination with the Bundeskartellamt.

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News

The Australian technology giant is considering “a range of potential funding alternatives” to support the project

Earlier this week, Macquarie Technology Group revealed to investors that it was exploring funding options for a new 150MW data centre campus project, aiming to meet the expected boom in demand for AI and cloud computing.

The new campus would require between $2.5 billion and $3 billion in capital, excluding land value.

Speaking to investors on Tuesday, CEO David Tudehope said that the company was currently exploring its options for financing the data centre build out at the optioned location. One possibility would be to recycle capital by selling off a stake in the company’s more mature data centre assets. Alternatively, Macquarie could also partner with a third-party to create a joint venture.

“Funding for the new campus […] will come from recycled capital from the existing data centres and/or a development partnership,” said Tudehope, as reported in the Financial Review. “Both of those ideas are quite common overseas but are less common in Australia.”

The tech company has already struck a deal for the required land in Sydney for $240 million earlier this year, to be funded through cash reserves and debt.

Macquarie has been investing in data centres since 2018, with its flagship project taking place at the Macquarie Park Data Centre Campus in Sydney. Phase 1 of the site’s development, known as Sydney IC3 East, was completed in 2020, providing over 12MW of capacity. Phase 2, will see the site scaled further with the construction of the IC3 Super West data centre, bringing total capacity to 65MW.

Construction on C3 Super West began last year and is expected to be complete by Q3 2026. Macquarie extended its loan facilities to $450 million last year to facilitate this expansion.

Combining these existing assets with the planned 150MW would make Macquarie one of the largest data centre providers in Australia.

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