This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Mike Tapp, Head of Finance at LiquidStack
Not a week goes by without news of yet another super-massive data center being planned, proposed, or built. The headlines are filled with eye-watering figures around size, cost, capacity, and aggressive timelines. But while big numbers are a good way to attract eyeballs, one of the figures that matters most to today’s data center operators is rarely reflected in today’s headlines. … [visit site to read more]
Ooredoo announced its latest spinoff on Thursday with the launch of Al Abraj, a new standalone company that will independently operate and manage Ooredoo Qatar’s passive tower infrastructure assets in the country.
The launch follows the receipt of the necessary regulatory approvals from the Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) and other government agencies, and marks the first operational carve-out under Ooredoo’s TowerCo initiative, a key part of Ooredoo’s broader portfolio optimisation strategy.
Ooredoo also announced that it has appointed Khalid Barzak as General Director of Al Abraj. Khalid has held leadership roles in the telecoms sector for the past 16 years. In Ooredoo Group, he has held senior leadership positions spanning telecoms, digital services, investments and partnerships.
Ooredoo credited Khalid with playing a key role in driving the growth and turnaround of Ooredoo’s digital services and partnerships businesses, which are now meaningful contributors to the group’s profitability.
“Khalid will lead Al Abraj through its next phase of development, focusing on operational excellence, value creation and supporting the long-term growth of Ooredoo’s tower infrastructure platform,” Ooredoo said in a release.
The spinoff of Ooredoo’s passive tower infrastructure business is the latest move by the company to spin off its business units following the carve-out of its regional data centre operations last year. The resulting entity, Syntys, currently operates active data centres in Qatar, Tunisia, Kuwait, Oman and Iraq.
Earlier this year, Ooredoo announced plans to spin off its international connectivity and subsea cable infrastructure business into a new independent company called Ooredoo Fibre Networks (OFN), which is expected to be completed sometime in 2027.
Indian telco Vodafone Idea (Vi) announced on Thursday it has launched silent mobile verification (SMV) capabilities for users of Meta’s WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, which promises to make it simpler and more secure to use them.
SMV is a network-based authentication technology that uses network APIs to verify a user’s mobile number in the background without requiring manual entry of verification credentials, switching between apps, or waiting for verification messages.
For Vi subscribers, this means that whenever they access WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram using Vi’s network, the verification request is validated through the network itself, delivering a faster and frictionless experience.
Vi said this translates into a smoother and easier experience for scenarios like new user registration, mobile number verification, login and re-login, account recovery, and authentication during security checks. For Vi, this means faster onboarding, fewer manual steps, and enhanced protection against phishing and digital identity risks.
Vodafone Idea CEO Abhijit Kishore said that network-based verification technologies like SMV are emerging as important enablers to improve trust in digital services in India, where scam and fraud prevention have become serious issues.
“Telecom networks are increasingly playing an important role in enabling safer digital experiences. With millions of consumers relying on Vi’s secure telecom network every day, we can build these experiences on a scale,” Kishore said in a statement. “Through our partnership with Meta, we are enabling SMV capabilities that enhance cyber safety and reduce fraud risks, while creating seamless authentication experiences for users across some of the country’s most widely used digital platforms.”
Vi said it plans to expand network-based verification in the future across additional applications and ecosystem partners, as well as other trust-based use cases, including enhanced authentication, fraud prevention and intelligent risk- based verification solutions.
IQSTEL, a global connectivity, AI and digital services company, has announced a binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) to acquire a 51% controlling interest in Ghana-headquartered Ultranet Telecom Group.
Ultranet is a fast-growing telecom and technology company headquartered in Ghana, with operations across Africa and international markets.
The parties anticipate that the transaction will support IQSTEL’s long-term growth objectives. Leandro Iglesias, CEO of IQSTEL, explains: « This is more than an acquisition; it is a strategic partnership combining Ultranet’s powerful African telecom platform with IQSTEL’s global commercial infrastructure, AI capabilities, and digital services vision. Together, we intend to accelerate Ultranet’s Africa growth and launch the Ultranet platform into the Middle East and Asia. »
Raymond Oppong-Dapaah, CEO and Owner of Ultranet Telecom Group, adds: « We were looking for a strategic partner to accelerate our Africa growth and expand into the Middle East and Asia. IQSTEL brings global scale, financial strength and a strong digital services vision that we believe will take Ultranet to the next level. »
Ultranet operates across Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Ivory Coast, with commercial activities in Europe, Asia and North America.
A key strategic asset of Ultranet is its portfolio of six exclusive international SMS gateway agreements with leading African mobile operators, granting sole international SMS routing rights in their respective markets.
These strategic exclusivity agreements, says IQSTEL, represent high-barrier-to-entry assets with recurring revenue characteristics and strong long-term commercial value.
The combined platform is expected to operate in approximately 30 countries across five continents. IQSTEL believes the transaction creates substantial strategic value through expanded telecom infrastructure and carrier operations and accelerated growth of high-margin digital services, AI and fintech.
It also believes that this deal will accelerate the company’s presence in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, allow stronger international interconnection capabilities and boost operational synergies and cost efficiencies.
Two data center projects and two fiber updates: … [visit site to read more]
Huawei announced on Wednesday that MTN Zambia has commercially deployed the vendor’s five-band LampSite indoor 5G solution in the Mulungushi International Conference Center in Lusaka.
The solution combines 1.8 GHz, 2.1 GHz, 2.3 GHz, TDD 2.6 GHz, and 3.5 GHz in a single box and supports multi-band coordination for peak speeds of 1 Gbps. The deployment enables MTN to support 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G connections on the same system.
Accoding to Huawei, the Mulungushi Center was in need of a better indoor coverage solution to support its summits, exhibitions, and business events, where people are more likely to use bandwidth-intensive mobile apps like HD video, livestreaming, and cloud services.
Outdoor 3.5 GHz macro base stations can’t provide strong 5G signals inside the venue, while the Mulungushi Center’s distributed antenna system (DAS) couldn’t support multi-band connectivity. Expanding the DAS to support more bands would increase equipment complexity, deployment time and O&M costs.
By contrast, LampSite’s optical, multi-band architecture simplified deployment and reduced headends by up to 50% to cover the same area, significantly reducing capex and construction time, while its energy-saving feature also helps the venue save on opex, Huawei said.
“Our 5-in-1 LampSite deployment at Mulungushi enables us to deliver consistent indoor and outdoor experiences,” said MTN Zambia CTO Thomas Ngoma in a statement. “With this deployment, we will be better positioned to provide fast, seamless, and reliable connectivity for indoor HD video calling, online interactions, and AR/XR applications.”
Dr. Philip Song, president of Huawei’s small cell product line, said the Mulungushi Center deployment marks the first commercial deployment of its five-band LampSite solution in the world.
“We will deepen our collaboration with MTN Zambia to replicate the multi-band solution and 4T in more areas like airports, central business districts, and transportation hubs,” Song added.
MTN Zambia launched the country’s first 5G network in January 2022.
Two from northwestern Europe and two from the US/Mexico border region: … [visit site to read more]
Today, Alphabet has announced it will raise $80 billion in equity, the company’s first stock offering in over 20 years.
The transaction includes a $30 billion underwritten stock offering, a $40 billion at-the-market share programme, and a $10 billion strategic investment from investment giant Berkshire Hathaway.
According to the filing, roughly half the proceeds will be used ‘for general corporate purposes, including capital expenditures to scale AI infrastructure and global compute’. The rest will be used to meet tax obligations connected with the “vesting of employee equity awards”.
The document also notes the company’s predicted capex for the 2026 financial year to be $180–$190 billion, with expectations that 2027 capex will “significantly increase”.
The move represents a notable shift in strategy for Alphabet, which had only recently authorised a $70 billion share repurchase programme in April 2025. The issuing of new shares suggests that the company not only believes that the demand for connectivity and infrastructure will remain robust, but that ownership of the physical infrastructure that powers AI will be increasingly important.
Of course, Alphabet is not alone in seeking public funding for its AI infrastructure investments. SpaceX filed for an IPO late last month, claiming a total addressable market of $28.5 trillion largely based on a continued boom of AI integration in every aspect of our lives. Anthropic has now also followed suit, according to reports, with ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI expected to do likewise in the near future.
Also in the news
TELUS and L-SPARK give Canadian startups access to AI supercomputer
Belden to acquire RUCKUS Networks for $1.85bn
VMO2 taps Suffolk solar farm for 10 years of clean energy
As telecom operators scramble to define their place in the artificial intelligence (AI) value chain, one question continues to hang over the industry: what happens when the hyperscalers arrive?
For many operators, the prospect of competing against the likes of OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic appears daunting. Yet for Veon, whose markets span countries including Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Ukraine, the rise of global AI giants is not viewed as an existential threat.
Instead, the operator sees itself occupying a different layer of the AI ecosystem altogether.
“We’re at the point where AI is becoming the next accelerator of engagement,” said Lasha Tabidze (pictured), Chief Digital Operations Officer at Veon, during a recent media roundtable in London.
The company has spent the past several years transforming itself from a traditional telecoms operator into what Tabidze describes as “a digital services and enterprise company, which also happens to have the telecom licence”.
That transformation now sits at the heart of Veon’s AI 1440 strategy, an evolution of its earlier Digital Operator 1440 programme. The name refers to the 1,440 minutes in a day, with the company aiming to embed AI into customers’ daily lives across finance, healthcare, education and entertainment.
The strategy is already being deployed at scale. Veon operates across markets with a combined population of around half a billion people. Across those markets, roughly one in three people use one of its telecoms services, while one in two use one of its digital platforms.
Distribution matters more than models
While much of the AI industry’s attention remains focused on increasingly powerful large language models (LLMs), Tabidze argues that the real battle has shifted elsewhere.
“Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking about which GPT model they’re using,” he said. “People think about healthcare, education, entertainment and financial stability.”
That belief underpins Veon’s conviction that AI deployment will ultimately prove more valuable than AI development alone.
Rather than trying to build a direct rival to ChatGPT or Gemini, the company has focused on creating local language models and AI-powered services that sit on top of existing global foundation models.
In Kazakhstan, Veon developed Kaz-LLM, a locally trained language model designed around Kazakh language, culture and context. Similar initiatives are underway in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Ukraine.
The approach reflects a pragmatic view of the AI landscape.
“I don’t think there’s any value in competing against hyperscalers,” Tabidze said. “They have resources, they are doing this for the world, they’re doing huge investments.”
Trying to match that investment would be impossible, he argued. “You cannot start discussing putting in 1,000 GPUs when a hyperscaler is discussing 200,000 GPUs in a new data centre.”
Instead, Veon uses global foundation models as a base layer before adding local data, language capabilities and domain-specific functionality.
For the operator, the competitive advantage lies not in building the world’s biggest AI model but in ensuring that AI works effectively for a farmer in rural Bangladesh, a student in Kazakhstan or a small business owner in Pakistan.
Local AI for local markets
A recurring theme throughout the discussion was the importance of context.
Tabidze argued that translation alone is insufficient for many AI applications. Local language models can better capture cultural references, historical context, regulatory requirements and linguistic nuances that global models may overlook.
That is particularly relevant in Veon’s markets, many of which have languages that receive far less attention from major AI developers.
The company views this as both a commercial opportunity and a way of preventing AI from widening the digital divide.
“The next billion users of AI will not be coming from the West,” said Tabidze. “They will be coming from countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and India.”
For many users in these markets, smartphones represent their primary – and often only – gateway to the internet. Voice interfaces could also become increasingly important where literacy rates remain lower than in developed markets.
The objective is to make AI accessible and affordable enough for mass-market adoption.
That affordability challenge is significant. In some of Veon’s markets, average monthly telecom spending remains below US$2, making Western AI subscription models difficult to replicate.
Telecom’s hidden AI advantage
Veon believes operators possess a major advantage that many in the industry have historically underestimated: distribution.
“Telecoms are the cheapest distribution network for any digital product,” Tabidze argued.
The logic is straightforward. Operators already maintain trusted relationships with millions of customers, understand usage patterns and possess established billing systems.
Those capabilities become particularly valuable when introducing AI services.
Today, more than 2.5 million Veon users actively use AI agents within its platforms. The company’s digital ecosystem now reaches more than 240 million active users over a 90-day period, including around 70 million who are not telecom subscribers at all.
That reach allows Veon to integrate AI directly into existing digital services rather than relying on standalone chatbot applications.
The company has already deployed AI across financial services, healthcare and education. In Kazakhstan, it is also testing AI commerce capabilities that allow users to search for products, make purchases and complete payments through conversational interfaces.
Meanwhile, Veon’s fintech operations now serve around 60 million mobile financial services users.
Growth increasingly driven by digital services
The operator’s confidence in its AI strategy is reflected in its financial ambitions.
According to Tabidze, digital businesses accounted for less than 7% of Veon’s revenues only a few years ago. Today they contribute roughly 25%.
In the first quarter, digital revenues grew by nearly 58% year-on-year in US dollar terms, significantly outpacing the company’s telecoms business, which also delivered double-digit growth.
Veon openly expects digital services to account for half of total revenues by 2030.
The company sees AI as the primary catalyst for reaching that milestone.
As AI becomes embedded into customer-facing applications, Veon expects higher engagement, greater personalisation and stronger monetisation opportunities across its digital portfolio.
Sovereignty, trust and the future
The rise of sovereign AI also plays into Veon’s strategy.
Across many markets, governments are becoming increasingly focused on where data is stored, how AI models are trained and who ultimately controls critical digital infrastructure.
Tabidze views this less as a protectionist trend and more as a matter of digital independence.
Trust, he argues, will become one of the most valuable assets in the AI era.
As AI agents take on more responsibility – from financial transactions to healthcare support and e-commerce purchases – users will need confidence in the systems handling their data and making recommendations.
For operators, that could create an opportunity to leverage decades of customer trust and infrastructure ownership.
Whether telecoms can successfully capitalise on that opportunity remains one of the industry’s defining questions.
Veon, however, appears convinced that the future of AI will not be decided solely by whoever builds the largest model.
It will also depend on who can deploy that intelligence most effectively, make it affordable and place it in the hands of millions of users.
On that front, the company believes telecom operators still have a role to play.
For more than two decades, the World Communication Awards (WCAs) has set the global benchmark for excellence, innovation, and leadership across the telecoms industry. Recognised worldwide as one of the sector’s most prestigious honours, the WCAs celebrate the companies and individuals driving meaningful change and shaping the future of global communications.
The WCAs is judged by an independent panel of more than 100 industry experts and every entry undergoes a rigorous review process to ensure the awards recognise genuine innovation, measurable impact, and outstanding achievements,
From 5G, AI, cloud and cyber security to submarine networks, sustainability, crisis response, customer experience and beyond, there is a category for every part of the telecoms ecosystem.
Think you could be a winner? Make sure you get started on your entry today! Enter all nominations before the deadline on Friday 19th June 2026. Top tip: you can part complete your entry and come back to it later.
5G Award
Winner: Singtel, in partnership with Ericsson, for Singtel 5G+
(Silver Award: KT, AICT Company)
Access Innovation
Winner: Ericsson and Telstra for the world’s first 5G triple-band FDD Massive MIMO
(Silver Award: Rakuten Symphony, Rakuten Site Management’s Fiber Manager)
AI Innovation
Winner: Jio Platforms for JioBrain
(Silver Award: Chunghwa Telecom)
Best Digital Transformation Programme
Winner: Ericsson and IOH for their Digital Monetization Platform
(Silver Award: Jazz and Huawei)
Best Network Evolution Initiative
Winner: Colt Technology Services for their global Optical network
(Silver Award: Telefónica Global Solutions)
Best operator in a Growth Market
Winner: Lumitel
(Silver Awards: Smart Axiata)
Best Wholesale Operator
Winner: Orange Wholesale
(Silver Award: Colt Technology Services, Wholesale SIP)
Beyond Connectivity Award
Winner: VEON for JazzCash
(Silver Award: PT Telkomsel)
Cloud Award
Winner: Jio Platforms for its Cloud Platforms and Private MEC
(Silver Award: Rakuten Symphony for Rakuten Cloud)
Connected Communities Award
Winner: Airband for its next generation Fixed Wireless Access
(Silver Award: Fibrus)
Crisis Response Award
Winner: Palestine Telecommunications Company – Jawwal
(Silver Award: Prima Limited, ICN1 Earthquake crisis response in Vanuatu)
Cyber Security Award
Winner: Jio Platforms for its Quantum-Safe Security Suite
(Silver Award: Bridge Alliance and Aeris Communications, Aeris IoT WatchtowerTM)
Enterprise Service of the Year
Winner: China Broadcasting Network & AsiaInfo Technologies for their Smart Wind Farm private 5G network
(Silver Award: Singtel, Singtel 5G+ Priority and Enterprise Mobile Protect)
Future Award
Winner: Singtel for its Quantum-Safe Network
(Silver Award: Cohere Technologies)
People and Culture Award
Winner: Viettel Group
(Silver Award: Deutsche Telekom – Europe Segment, DT Europe Talent Powerhouse)
Platform Award
Winner: Singtel for the Paragon Platform
(Silver Award: Rakuten Symphony, Rakuten Cloud-Native Platform)
Satellite Telecoms Award
Winner: Telefonica Global Solutions
(Silver Award: VEON and Kyivstar, Kyivstar/Starlink)
Social Contribution Award
Winner: Helium
(Silver Award: Moldcell Foundation)
Submarine Networks Award
Winner: EllaLink
(Silver Award: Telin)
Sustainability Award
Winner: Vodafone & Closing the Loop, One for One
(Silver Award: KT, AI-based ES Orchestrator)
Total Experience Award
Winner: Sparkle
(Silver Award: China Mobile (Guangdong) & Huawei, AI+BOSS)
Next Gen Award
Winner: Chiago Akpata – Senior Manager, Regulatory Affairs at Bayobab
(Silver Award: Sam Sham, RETN)
Startup of the Year Award
Winner: nodeQ
(Silver Award: A5G Networks)
The World Communication Awards 2026 are your opportunity to showcase your achievements on a global stage. Start your entry today!
