That’s today’s news from Bloomberg. The UK incumbent BT Group is taking steps that could lead to the sale of all or part of the company’s international business. According to the article, they have reached out to AT&T and Orange to talk about possible transactions. … [visit site to read more]
This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Anil Kollipara, vice president of Product Management, Spirent Communications
Two decades ago, “operational resilience” in telecom was mostly about keeping the lights on—keeping voice and data services available in the event of outages or equipment failures. Today, as we conduct more of our personal and professional lives online, the stakes are much higher. Resilience now means ensuring that people can continue transacting, trading, and accessing the critical digital services that keep the … [visit site to read more]
Aamir Ibrahimn (pictured), CEO of Pakistani operator Jazz, has revealed that the Veon-owned company is expanding its services into healthcare as part of its growth strategy.
Speaking to Developing Telecoms at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Ibrahim highlighted how Jazz has evolved beyond traditional telecoms to establish itself as a technology company.
“We were a lot more intentional in 2023 in terms of redefining our purpose—from being a traditional telecom company to becoming a dynamic digital services provider,” said Ibrahim.
He noted that this shift mirrors the broader transformation of telecoms operators worldwide, which are increasingly positioning themselves as service providers rather than just mobile network operators (MNOs).
“The connectivity part of the business will always remain with us—we’re really proud of it, and it gives us a ticket to play the game,” he said.
The “game” Ibrahim refers to is Veon Group’s strategy of driving growth through digital services, with a goal of engaging consumers for “1,440 minutes per day” across its markets.
Betting on digital services
Two years ago, Jazz made three key strategic bets to expand its services. The first was investing in mobile financial services through JazzCash, its digital payments platform. The second focused on growing its digital content offerings, including streaming and insurance services. The third bet was on cloud and analytics technology, helping to enhance its digital capabilities.
Ibrahim considers these bets successful and is now doubling down by expanding into new sectors.
“Our priority for 2025 is to continue evolving this service-led model. We’ve had success in financial services and entertainment, and now we’re building out new segments in health and education,” he said.
Reshaping the business model
To facilitate this expansion, Jazz restructured its business model eight months ago, shifting from a “monolithic single company” into multiple specialised units. This includes its financial services arm, which now oversees Mobilink Microfinance Bank.
In December, Jazz also announced the sale of its tower business to Engro Corporation for US$563 million, providing funding to support its strategic shift.
Jazz has already made strides in insurance with the launch of its platform, FikrFree, which has sold around 3 million insurance policies and generates US$2 million in recurring monthly revenue.
Tackling Pakistan’s healthcare challenges
Jazz is taking aim at another potential vertical and that is the Pakistan’s overstretched healthcare sector.
Multiple barriers prevent people from accessing treatment. Ibrahim sees this as an opportunity for technology to bridge the gaps.
Jazz is developing an AI-powered healthcare app that will allow patients to describe their symptoms in voice or text, generating an automated transcript. This system aims to speed up the diagnosis process, taking inspiration from e-commerce platforms like Shopify.
“The interaction between the patient and our AI bot will be captured in voice, with a transcript produced, allowing for faster recommendations,” Ibrahim explained.
If a physical consultation is required, the platform will facilitate bookings, and Jazz will partner with pharmacies to ensure a seamless e-commerce experience for purchasing medicines.
“This is still in development, but this is the direction we’re heading in. Like many of our other products, we will learn as we go. We may end up with exactly what I’ve described, or we may refine our approach based on customer needs,” he added.
A ‘service company’, not a ‘Techco’
Despite its transition from a traditional telecoms player to a technology-driven company, Ibrahim is cautious about embracing the “techco” label, which has become an industry buzzword.
“We avoided calling ourselves a techco because we wanted to be more humble in our approach. Technology can sometimes alienate customers—there are concerns about data privacy, surveillance, and an arrogance that can come with technological sophistication.
“We want to be a service company—one that serves its customers with humility, passion, and dedication,” he concluded.
During MWC 25 Barcelona, Huawei held the Intelligent Operations Summit to bring together global carriers, industry partners, and industry organizations and discuss how carriers can upgrade their operations in the intelligent era, enabling new experiences and of course new growth.
Addressing the summit, Xun Su, President of Huawei Global Technical Service Dept, said: “In the next decade, operators will accelerate the intelligent operations process. By in-depth integration of digital twins and GenAI+Predictive AI, a new operations paradigm of ‘human + AI agent collaboration’ is built, and scenario-based value closure is implemented along the end user journey and carrier value stream.”
Carriers are increasingly using AI to enhance their services, creating rich digital intelligence services to enhance their customers’ lives. In Africa, Huawei Mobile Money has benefited from AI integration, with customers now able to expand from mobile payments to other mobile financial services. By the end of FY 2024, Huawei Mobile Money generated more than US$900 million in mobile finance revenue. At the same time, operators are using digital twins and AI technologies to reshape the end-to-end NPS journey. In the Asia Pacific region, Huawei helps customers implement multi-agent collaboration, streamline processes and data breakpoints between AICC and SmartCare, reduce the user complaint rate by 30%, and improve the service NPS. In China, Operator has worked with Huawei to build a leading N-NPS network. The detractor is reduced by 20% and the NPS is improved by 8%.
Value Stream Journey: Build « 3A » Best Cognitive Network to Monetize Differentiated Experiences
Using its pioneering network experience, Huawei has built a « 3A » experience-based network to ensure real-time service awareness, KPI/KQI achievable, and differentiated experience assurance.
Converged data and AI are used to accurately identify user profiles, helping carriers recommend appropriate packages to users at an opportune time through relevant channels. This represents a shift from only monetizing traffic to monetizing experience.
For value scenarios and services, the spatiotemporal digital twin is used to transform from best-effort to differentiated experience assurance. Huawei helps carriers build optimal delivery drivers experience networks. In one quarter, 380,000 delivery drivers subscribed the package, and the revenue increases by 6%. Huawei uses the SRCON spatiotemporal digital twin technology to help operators build optimal live broadcast experience networks. The uplink rate experienced increases from 3 Mbit/s to over 5 Mbit/s.
Richer service scenarios and more complex network architecture place higher requirements on network stability and operations. This means that the operations mode must be upgraded; its focus must shift from ‘people + tools’ to ‘people + AI agents’ to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Huawei has partnered with a carrier to build the Digital Intelligence Operation Center (DIOC), which combines NOC, SOC, and NPM to reduce traffic loss by 8.4%. Huawei FME (field maintenance engineer) copilot helps onsite maintenance engineers reduce unnecessary site visits and improve the MTTR by 30%.
Xun Su called on operators to seize the opportunities presented by comprehensive intelligence, embracing human-agent collaboration, real-time data awareness, and high-quality CoT (Chain of Thought). Answering questions as a chatbot is no longer enough – operators must use intelligent operations to resolve these questions by completing tasks. However, there must also be collaboration between people and AI agents, real-time data awareness, and a high-quality chain of thought (CoT) corpus. This approach will help to resolve questions and tasks.
The CoT capability of GenAI+ Predictive AI collaboration combines with the real-time simulation of digital twins to solve scenario-based problems and realize value closed-loop – i.e. creating value for operators. Operations should be service-oriented rather than network-oriented, and resolving issues relating to high-value services should be prioritized.
By implementing intelligent operations, telcos will be able to solve these scenario-based problems and realise closed-loop value, enabling new growth.
TIM Group’s global operator Sparkle and Al-Bawaba for Telecommunications and Informatics, a Libyan ISP provider offering a wide range of ICT solutions, say they have enhanced their commercial partnership to provide international connectivity services to and from Libya.
The agreement is based on a state-of-the-art fully redundant infrastructure, which relies on Al-Bawaba’s Libyan national backbone and on Sparkle’s international capacity for the provision of Ethernet MPLS connectivity services to corporate customers.
As a result, say the partners, Sparkle and Al-Bawaba will provide end-to-end solutions combined with value-added services and customer care, leveraging Sparkle’s portfolio and international presence and Al-Bawaba’s local support.
Barbara Sole, Head of Data Sales for Africa at Sparkle, explains: « By combining our global expertise and extensive submarine cable network with Al Bawaba’s strong local presence and market knowledge, we are committed to delivering enhanced connectivity solutions that will empower businesses across Libya. »
Established in 2012, Al-Bawaba specialises in data connectivity solutions for multinational enterprises, government entities, NGOs, incumbent telecom operators, ISPs, and mobile operators.
As a strategic partner of Sparkle, Al-Bawaba offers a robust and secure international network, leveraging protected international private leased circuit (IPLC), Ethernet-over-SDH (EoS), and multiprotocol label switching (MPLS)-capable submarine and terrestrial fibre infrastructure.
This is the latest big announcement in what appears to be a busy period for Sparkle. During MWC25, Sparkle and Turkcell signed a memorandum of understanding on a subsea cable solution connecting Izmir to Milan.
More recently, Sparkle, Gold Data and Liberty Networks, the partners behind MANTA, a new subsea cable system connecting Mexico and the USA with Central and Latin America, announced that SubCom had been chosen for the design, manufacture, and installation of the MANTA system.
A few items from around the world to keep up with: … [visit site to read more]
Abu Dhabi’s Department of Government Enablement has announced an agreement with Microsoft and Core42, a G42 company specialising in sovereign cloud, AI infrastructure and digital services. G42 is an artificial intelligence development company based in Abu Dhabi.
The agreement, say the partners, will create a unified, high-performance sovereign cloud computing environment capable of processing more than 11 million daily digital interactions between Abu Dhabi government entities, citizens, residents and businesses.
The government’s ambition is to enable the world’s first fully AI-native government by 2027, one committed to three goals in particular: enhancing government services to be more efficient and accessible for citizens and residents; creating greater transparency and security for businesses and investors; and fostering a more resilient and innovative environment for the public sector workforce.
Abu Dhabi aims to automate 100% of its government processes, supported by US$3.54 billion investment in digital infrastructure through the Abu Dhabi Government Digital Strategy 2025-2027.
This strategy will see over 200 AI-driven solutions deployed to improve public service delivery, boost operational productivity, and contribute to environmental sustainability.
In fact the government can already cite innovations such as TAMM 3.0, Abu Dhabi’s one-stop government services app, which has reduced the number of offline customer visits by 90% and made more than 73% of transactions instantaneous.
G42 was in the news recently when G42 and Thailand International Digital Business & Finance Centre (TIDC) announced a strategic partnership aimed at enhancing Thailand’s digital infrastructure, particularly in cloud technology and AI innovation.
We also reported in February that UAE-based telco e& had sold its 40% stake in another UAE company, Khazna Data Centres, to co-owner G42 for US$2.2 billion.
Four regional infrastructure deals from around the US to catch up with. … [visit site to read more]
Four interesting projects to catch up with, two in Europe and two in Latin America. … [visit site to read more]
ZTE Corporation has unveiled a range of new, AI-enabled devices during MWC2025 in Barcelona, under the banner of its « AI for All » product strategy.
They include a new full-screen smartphone and devices catering for the gaming, photography, fashion and music markets, as well as a lineup of AI-enabled fixed-wireless access (FWA) and mobile broadband (MBB) products featuring 5G-Advanced and Wi-Fi 7.
ZTE says it is creating a “full-scenario intelligent ecosystem” connecting person. vehicle and home, with a goal to ensure that every consumer can benefit from the efficiency, enhanced functionality and “emotional resonance” brought by AI.
In cooperation with its long-established global partners, including Qualcomm, Unisoc and Google, ZTE is committed to integrating world-leading AI capabilities across its smartphone and FWA & MBB product lines, explained Ni Fei, SVP of ZTE Corporation and President of ZTE Mobile Devices.
nubia expanding ZTE’s global market presence
In the AI era, smartphones are evolving into a comprehensive intelligent platform that seamlessly integrates connectivity, interaction, services, and entertainment, explained Fei. AI‘s most significant benefit is to upgrade the user interaction, with intelligent agents replacing traditional apps as the main consumer interface
« By seamlessly connecting multi-modal architectures with advanced AI large-language models (LLMs), we are transforming how users interact with technology across photography, gaming, translation, and AI generated content.”
Working with Google, ZTE is accelerating AI transformation in overseas markets, where all new products under its nubia brand will integrate Gemini, Google’s AI model, combined with Google Cloud’s scalable, secure, and high-performance infrastructure, says Fei.
ZTE says it has seen overseas smartphone shipments surge by over 60% since 2024, with notable market share gains across Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Europe.
nubia is now present in more than 30 countries and regions, and is “accelerating its global expansion with AI-driven devices offerings” fueled by gaming- and photography-centric product portfolios as well as “elevated product tiers, expansive sales channels, an enriched ecosystem, and strengthened localized marketing efforts,” says the company.
ZTE introduces “world-first” AI-powered FWA & MBB products
In the FWA and MBB market, ZTE points to partnerships with more than 130 operators in over 100 countries, and shipments amounting to more than 250 million devices globally, including 7 million 5G FWA & MBB units. The latest report from international consultancy firm, TSR, ranks ZTE as world No.1 in the FWA & MBB market, while ABI Research recognizes ZTE as the overall leader, top innovator, and top implementer in its 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) CPE Vendor Competitive Assessment report.
ZTE’s full-stack AI FWA solution incorporates six core AI-driven features: AI Multi-Scenario Application, AI QoS Management, AI Voice Control, AI Application Recognition, AI Children Protection, and real-time AI Network Optimization, says the company.
First of the three new AI FWA & MBB products unveiled during MWC2025, the ZTE G5 Ultra is a 5G-Advanced device capable of delivering peak speed of up to 19Gbps. It supports tri-band Wi-Fi 7, dual 2.5Gbps network ports, and integrates AI voice control and AI QoS management. By leveraging advanced AI algorithms, the ZTE G5 Ultra dynamically optimizes network performance, ensuring seamless connectivity for online gaming, 4K streaming, and remote work, says ZTE.
Secondly, the ZTE G5 Max Wi-Fi is a Wi-Fi 7/mmWave FWA device supporting both Sub-6GHz and mmWave carrier aggregation with peak speeds of up to 10Gbps. Featuring a 30dBi ultra-high-gain antenna design, it ensures stable signal reception at up to 6km coverage in outdoor environments, dramatically improving both downlink and uplink speeds, and decreasing power consumption, according to ZTE.
Finally, the ZTE U60 Pro is claimed to be the world’s fastest Wi-Fi 7 5G Mobile device, capable of delivering peak speeds of 3.6Gbps. A 10,000mAh battery supports up to 16 hours of working time, and dual-band Wi-Fi 7, fast charging, and reverse charging capabilities provide convenient power-sharing for other mobile devices.
All three products support ZTE’s GIS (Green, artificial Intelligence, Security) product philosophy, which uses AI-driven technologies to optimize network performance, says the vendor. Key features include Green Energy Efficiency, with AI-driven energy-saving strategies that learn from user behavior to optimize power consumption; AI-Powered Intelligence, with ZTE’s AI Super Antenna, ensuring reliable connectivity even in weak signal areas; and Smart Network Optimization, which dynamically allocates bandwidth to improve efficiency and reduce congestion.
Partnership-driven FWA & MBB leadership
All three FWA & MBB products feature Qualcomm’s Dragonwing FWA Gen 3 platform with the Snapdragon X75 5G Modem-RF System, and promise to set a new benchmark in 5G performance, energy efficiency, spectrum flexibility and connectivity, says ZTE.
“FWA provides a cost-effective and flexible alternative to wired broadband enabling high-speed internet access in underserved parts of the world and remote areas,” said Rahul Patel, Group GM Connectivity, Broadband and Networking at Qualcomm Technologies.
Qualcomm’s collaboration with ZTE has been instrumental in driving innovation and excellence, and in the FWA market, the two companies have together achieved remarkable milestones including the development of cutting edge AI-based FWA solutions, said Patel.
“This is the power of partnership. ZTE has consistently demonstrated its leadership in the FWA marketplace maintaining a strong position for many years. ZTE’s expansive portfolio backed by Qualcomm’s advanced AI-driven technology solutions showcases the two companies’ dedication to innovation and commitment to excellence in the FWA market.”
