Amazon Web Services (AWS) said on Thursday that Malaysia’s Axiata Group has selected AWS as its primary cloud provider as part of its plan to accelerate digital transformation across its operating companies in Southeast Asia and South Asia.

AWS said Axiata will migrate a wide range of mission-critical applications to AWS by the end of 2024, including more than 650 services across customer service, enterprise resource planning, and human resources, and 80 machine learning (ML) applications.

Axiata will also make use of AWS technologies such as data analytics, ML and generative AI to inform data-driven business decisions, tailor offerings to new markets, and develop new services to meet evolving customer needs across the telecoms, banking, and payments industries, said Axiata group CIO Anthony Rodrigo.

“Customers expect effortless mobile transactions, and by tapping into AWS’s generative AI and machine learning capabilities, we can deliver on the needs of customers rapidly, securely, and more cost effectively,” he said in a statement. “The cloud gives us the agility to build new business models that will differentiate Axiata now and into the future.”

AWS noted that Axiata is already using some of its services and tools. For example, Axiata has been leveraging Amazon Bedrock – which makes multiple foundation models available via an API – to build experimental generative AI applications to improve productivity across all business lines, including customer service, finance, human resources, and sales.

Sri Lankan telco Dialog Axiata has been using Amazon SageMaker to transform its analytics and ML infrastructure into an internal AI factory system that enables the company to use analytics and ML to develop and deploy churn prediction and next best-offer systems to drive customer engagement.

Meanwhile, Indonesian telco XL Axiata is using Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) to launch and run its MyXL and AXISnet mobile applications without needing to manage underlying infrastructure. Result: XL Axiata has expanded the availability of its services, tripled its monthly active users in two years, and scaled its applications nearly twice as fast compared to using on-premises infrastructure, AWS said.

“With AWS, Axiata can diversify and modernize their business in the cloud, while shaping the future of customer service with generative AI,” said Conor McNamara, vice president at AWS ASEAN.

Indonesian telecoms infrastructure Dayamitra Telekomunikasi (Mitratel) said it has added more towers and optical fibre to its portfolio via separate acquisition deals worth a combined US$167.3 million.

Mitratel, a subsidiary of Telkom Indonesia, said on Thursday it had acquired 803 towers belonging to Gametraco Tunggal worth IDR 1.75 trillion (US$112.6 million). Of those, 241 towers are located on the island of Java, while the remainder are outside of the island.

Mitratel President Director Theodorus Ardi Hartoko said that many telecoms players in Indonesia are looking to expand their market share outside of Java as demand for internet connectivity grows elsewhere in the archipelago.

“Of course we have to be at the forefront in helping their expansion,” he said.

Apart from giving Mitratel more towers outside of Java, the Gametraco deal also comes with an additional 1,327 new tenants, which will increase Mitratel’s tenancy ratio, Hartoko added.

Meanwhile, also on Thursday, Mitratel revealed it had acquired 967.1 km of optical fibre from Power Telecom for IDR 85 billion.

Mitratel said the fibre has a billable length of over 1,144 km, which means the new fibre complements its tower business portfolio with a billable ratio of 1.18x.

Mitratel said the transaction was sourced from internal funds, noting that it had budgeted a capex of IDR 7 trillion for 2023, 58% of which had been absorbed by the end of the third quarter of 2023.

“This means that Mitratel has sufficient liquidity to finance tower and fibre optic expansion until the end of this year,” the company said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Mitratel reported profit growth of 16.6% year-on-year to IDR14 trillion in Q3 2023, while revenue increased 11.9% to IDR6.3 trillion. In that quarter, Mitratel’s tower portfolio grew 5.8% year on year to 37,091 towers, while its optical fibre assets grew from 5,872 km to 29,042 km.

Hartoko said Mitratel’s expansion strategy will make it the largest digital infrastructure company in Asia Pacific.

Research firm Dgtl Infra said in September that Mitratel was the 13th biggest telecoms tower company in the world based on the number of towers. As of June 2023, Statista ranked Mitratel at #15 globally, but also said it was the largest tower company in Southeast Asia.

Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL), India’s leading private sector player for aerospace and defence solutions, and Satellogic, a major name in sub-meter resolution earth observation (EO) data collection, have announced a collaboration for establishing and developing local space technology capabilities in India.

This collaboration is described as a first step in TASL’s satellite strategy and a significant milestone for Satellogic as it enters the fast-growing Indian market.

The project will commence with comprehensive training, knowledge transfer, and local assembly of optical sub-meter resolution EO satellites, the first of which is planned to be launched as TSAT-1A. The focus will be on manufacturing satellites and developing imagery in India for national defence and commercial applications, towards which TASL is commissioning a satellite AIT plant at its Vemagal facility in Karnataka, a state in southwest India.

Sukaran Singh, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, TASL, says: “Space is important to TASL not just as a business but also due to its culture of precision that will help other activities in TASL. We are pleased to announce our collaboration with Satellogic, a company with best-in-class technology and an entrepreneurial mindset. Additionally, TASL will also work with local SMEs for payloads and other technologies to bolster India content.”

TASL and Satellogic will collaborate on the development of a new satellite design and work together to integrate multiple payloads on a single satellite that will generate a diverse range of data over India.

“This collaboration will accelerate space capacity building for one of the largest nations in the world with the goal of enabling the advancement of commercial space capabilities and greater access to critical information for a range of applications such as security, sustainability, and energy,” says Emiliano Kargieman, Chief Executive Officer and Founder at Satellogic.

EXA Infrastructure has been putting some significant effort into its footprint in southeastern Europe this year. Today that effort is taking them across the Aegean Sea to directly connect Crete to their fiber network and bring bandwidth to the mythical home of the minotaur. … [visit site to read more]

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This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Suzy Menneret, Wholesale Advisor and Program Lead at the Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF)

One thing that has been a constant in the existence of a Mobile Network Operator over time is the ownership of two core elements: the network and the customer relationship.

This has been historically true in the consumer segment as a large proportion … [visit site to read more]

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Pan-African operator MTN and technology giant NEC Corporation say they have launched Africa’s first 400G optical transponder.

Called Phoenix, this initiative, according to MTN and NEC, marks a significant milestone for the telecommunications industry in Africa, with the potential to revolutionise the way optical networks are built and operated, thereby transforming internet delivery across the continent.

Phoenix is part of the Telecom Infra Project’s (TIP) Open Optical and Packet Transport (OOPT) project group, a collaborative effort involving multiple telecom operators and technology providers. The solution has met TIP’s rigorous test requirements, earning it a Controlled Environment Silver Badge, indicative of its readiness for deployment.

TIP describes itself as a global community of companies and organisations working together to accelerate the development and deployment of open, disaggregated, and standards-based technology solutions that deliver the high-quality connectivity that the world needs.

The deployment of Phoenix is designed to accelerate internet connectivity and optimise network operations, thereby democratising access to information. More importantly perhaps, it aims to make affordable internet more widely available across Africa.

MTN has embraced this technology, integrating it into its production network, specifically across its optical network between Johannesburg and Centurion in South Africa.

Phoenix is a network device, known as a white box L0/L1 transponder, that can transmit data at speeds of up to 400 gigabits per second. Its disaggregated nature allows it to be programmed to run any vendor’s software, offering operators flexibility in hardware and software selection.

This disaggregation, we are told, leads to cost reductions, accelerates innovation, and enables quicker and easier deployment of new network services.