Georgian mobile operator Cellfie Mobile has expanded its partnership with Finnish BSS provider Qvantel to include managed services for its business support systems (BSS), in a move aimed at accelerating its evolution into a digital services provider.

As part of the agreement, Qvantel has established an operations centre in Georgia and assembled a team of BSS experts to provide daily support to Cellfie.

Giorgi Niniashvili, Chief Information Technology Officer at Cellfie Mobile, said: “As the first mobile operator in Georgia to launch 5G services, we are proud to be leading the country’s digital advancement. Having a dedicated team of Qvantel BSS experts working alongside us strengthens our ability to innovate faster, operate more efficiently, and deliver the best possible experiences to our customers.”

The deal builds on Qvantel’s recent contract wins with Perfectum in Uzbekistan and Veon across multiple markets in its global footprint.

Telefónica has reportedly appointed investment bank Citi to advise on the sale of its Chilean unit, as the group continues to scale back its presence in Latin America.

According to Reuters, citing El Confidencial, the sale of its business in Chile would result in a capital loss for Telefonica. Under the leadership of new Group CEO Marc Murtra, the company has aggressively streamlined its portfolio to focus on its core markets in Brazil, the UK, Spain, and Germany.

So far, Telefonica has exited or reached agreements to divest its operations in Colombia, Peru, and Argentina. It has also reportedly hired JP Morgan to advise on the sale of Movistar Mexico, despite it being the country’s second-largest operator.

Telefonica has operated in Chile for 25 years, following its acquisition of a majority stake in Compania de Telefonos de Chile. Over time, the brand transitioned to Movistar and expanded its portfolio to include fixed-line and internet services.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said on Friday it intends to charge satellite internet players up to 4% of their adjusted gross revenue (AGR) over a five-year period to use spectrum allocated to them for satellite broadband services.

According to a statement from TRAI, both geostationary and non-geostationary satellite operators will have to pay a minimum annual fee of INR3,500 (around US$41) per MHz, with a cap of 4% of AGR.

Non-geostationary satellite operators – such as Eutelsat OneWeb and Starlink – will also have to pay an additional INR500 per subscriber per year for urban areas. Rural and remote areas will be exempt from the subscriber fee. TRAI said the government will also consider whether to subsidise satellite terminals in those areas.

TRAI also recommended that the Ku, Ka, Q/V, L, S, and C bands be assigned a period of five years, which the option to extend the assignment by another two years.

The proposal comes after months of consultation and debate that started when TRAI issued a consultation paper on terms and conditions for assigning spectrum for satellite internet services in September 2024.

The proposal still has to be approved by the Department of Telecommunication’s Digital Communications Commission and ratified by the cabinet, but it would officially establish TRAI’s preferred method of assigning satellite spectrum by administrative allocation rather than an auction process.

India’s three main telcos – Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea – had argued that an auction would be more fair, as the administrative allocation process would unfairly enable satellite broadband players to compete with telcos by offering cheaper internet services.

According to a report from ETTelecom on Friday, TRAI chairman AK Lahoti reiterated that the regulator considers satellite broadband to be a complementary service for terrestrial broadband, not a competitive one.

“It’s not factually correct that satcom services are competing with terrestrial services because there is a huge difference between the capacity of the terrestrial network and the satellite network,” Lahoti was quoted as saying.

Ironically, Airtel and Jio signed separate partnership deals with Starlink in March. Jio is also working with LEO satellite operator Eutelsat OneWeb via Orbit Connect India, the JV it established with SES in 2022.

The TRAI recommendations arrived a day after Starlink received a Letter of Intent from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for a satcom licence. The LEO satellite operator still needs clearance from Indian space regulator IN–SPACe before it can officially launch services.

Like Eutelsat OneWeb and Orbit Connect (which have all the necessary licences and regulatory clearances), Starlink is also waiting for the DoT to officially allocate spectrum with which to offer services, although the DoT provisionally allocated satellite spectrum to OneWeb and Orbit Connect in October 2024 for testing their respective satellite broadband services.

All licencees will also be required to comply with long list of security requirements, which the DoT revised last week.

The Indian government has reportedly granted conditional approval for SpaceX’s Starlink to begin offering satellite internet services in the country, according to a report by CNBC-TV18.

The broadcaster said a Letter of Intent was issued to the Elon Musk-owned company on May 7, signalling that a commercial launch is likely imminent. Similar letters were previously issued to Eutelsat OneWeb and Jio Satellite Communications ahead of their full licence approvals, CNBC-TV18 noted.

Starlink has faced several regulatory and political hurdles in its bid to enter the Indian market, which is among the largest in the world for internet connectivity due to its massive population. Its planned rollout encountered opposition from local mobile network operators, as well as national security concerns related to its low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation.

Ahead of receiving the government’s Letter of Intent, SpaceX had signed agreements with major Indian telecom players Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel to support the launch of its Starlink services.

Phase3 and Sonatel have activated a new terrestrial fibre route stretching 3,500km from Lagos, Nigeria, to Dakar, Senegal.

The route will provide scalable, low-latency connectivity, boosting cloud and content capacity across West Africa.

This collaboration marks the next phase of Phase3’s East-West fibre expansion, extending its Lagos-Accra corridor to reach Dakar, one of West Africa’s key digital hubs. This will provide a high-performance, land-based alternative to subsea systems, achieving latency as low as 32ms, and a much-needed layer of resilience for a region heavily impacted by the 2024 cable disruptions.

“This isn’t just a route, it’s a digital spine for West Africa,” said Stanley Jegede, Executive Chairman of Phase 3. “We’ve created a secure, high-capacity terrestrial path linking Dakar to Lagos while interconnecting our major platforms.”

By bridging networks through Benin, Togo, Ghana, and now through to Senegal, the new terrestrial path provides critical redundancy for hyperscalers, content networks, financial institutions, governments, and cloud providers. It also expands the Djoliba network from Ghana into Nigeria, while laying groundwork for Ikasira, Sonatel’s next-generation regional platform.

“We’ve designed this network for hyperscalers, CDNs, and operators that can’t afford downtime,” said Craig Lowe, Chief Growth Officer at Phase 3. “This is about data sovereignty, application performance, and cloud transformation. And most importantly, it’s about building an internet that doesn’t fail when the cables do.”

The route is engineered for financial services, enterprise cloud workloads, public sector digitisation, and media streaming, ensuring cross-border interoperability and local access to cloud zones like AWS Wavelength, hosted by Sonatel in Dakar. It also helps reduce exposure to future subsea outages, supporting national digital strategies across the region.

El Hadji Maty Sene, Managing Director of Sonatel Wholesale and International, added: “Dakar is emerging as a strategic connectivity hub for West Africa. With this route, clients benefit from diversified infrastructure, lower latency, and reliable access to global content.”

Cloud networking and security-as-a-service provider GTT Communications says it has expanded its global Tier 1 IP backbone in nine more countries in the Latin America and Asia Pacific regions.

In a statement on Wedneaday, GTT said its EnvisionCore IP network – which delivers low-latency connectivity for cloud-based applications and enterprise-grade traffic – now reaches key metro markets in Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand.

EnvisionCore serves as the backbone for GTT’s Envision platform, which provides access to the company’s suite of managed networking and security services, including Ethernet, SD-WAN, DDoS mitigation, SASE and managed firewall services.

GTT’s COO George Kuzmanovski said the expansion will boost connectivity options for wholesalers and enterprises operating in those markets, offering up to 400G speeds to handle growing demand for AI workloads and other hyperscale cloud apps.

“We’re especially pleased to expand our EnvisionCore platform to serve customers from these new locations, enhancing their network performance and improving network resiliency,” he said in a statement.

Airtel Africa returned to profit in its latest financial year driven by a rise in subscriber base despite a continued hit from currency devaluation across its markets.

In a statement, the operator highlighted an 8.7% year-on-year increase in total customers to 166.1 million, supported by a 4.3 percentage point rise in smartphone penetration to 44.8%. The number of data customers rose 14.1% to 73.4 million, with data usage per customer increasing by 30.4% to 7GB. This helped boost data ARPU by 15.4% in constant currency.

Mobile money users also grew, with Airtel Money reporting a 17.3% increase in subscribers to 44.6 million and an 11.4% growth in ARPU on a constant currency basis.

Key operational highlights for the year included the deployment of 2,583 new mobile sites and the rollout of approximately 3,300km of fibre to expand network capacity across its footprint.

However, full-year revenue fell 0.5% to US$4.96 billion, dragged down by currency devaluation -although in constant currency, revenue increased by 21.1%. Growth was strongest in the final quarter, buoyed by Nigerian tariff hikes and signs of macroeconomic stabilisation.

EBITDA dropped 5.1% to US$2.3 billion, with the margin narrowing to 46.5% from 48.8% the previous year. Capital expenditure totalled US$670 million, below guidance, but the operator plans to raise this to between US$725 million and US$750 million in the coming year.

Net profit reached US$328 million, a sharp turnaround from a US$89 million loss in the previous year, when earnings were hit by significant foreign exchange and derivative losses, particularly in Nigeria.

Indian data centre firm RackBank says it has broken ground on a campus in the city of Nava Raipur in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Spanning 13.5 acres, the development will be Chhattisgarh’s first data centre campus.

RackBank says that the facility will be built in four phases. The first will offer 80MW of capacity and will be capable of running 100,000 GPUs. It will offer 160MW of capacity at full build-out. The facility will use liquid immersion cooling solutions provided by RackBank itself.

The facility will be located in a newly built, 2.7 hectare Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for AI-based services. SEZs provide incentives and exemptions to encourage investment.

The company has stated that the facility was built on an initial investment of about US$12 million, scalable to US$36 million within five years. Precise rollout and development timings have so far not been provided.

Rackbank provides data centre infrastructure, cloud computing, and AI services. It currently operates a colocation facility in Indore and a hyperscale facility in Chennai, while facilities in Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Noida are currently in development.

In fact it was as recently as late 2024 that RackBank announced the launch of India’s first state-of-the-art, purpose-built AI data centre near Indore, a city in west-central India. This facility is said to be capable of housing 60,000 GPUs, with 80MW power.

MTN has announced that it will offer up to 1.2 million of its prepaid subscribers an option to buy a 4G smartphone for just ZAR99 ($5.42).

The move comes as South Africa prepares to shutter 2G and 3G services by the end of 2027 in a bid to free up spectrum for 4G and 5G services. This has been met with criticism from some corners, with Reuters reporting that critics claim it could worsen the digital divide among low-income demographics.

In a bid to ensure that users in such areas can afford smartphones that can be used with 4G and 5G networks, operators including MTN are encouraging the uptake of such devices. MTN South Africa CEO Charles Molapisi stated: “As the country transitions to technologies like 4G and 5G, it is vital that we take proactive steps to connect as many South Africans as possible”.

Three stages are planned for the initiative, which will commence this month and run until the end of 2026. The first stage will primarily target users in the Gauteng province, with around 5000 “carefully selected” customers being offered 4G devices based on an evaluation of several criteria, including spending, usage, and how long they have been with MTN.

The second stage will expand the initiative nationwide to over 130,000 customers, with the third stage increasing this to 1.1 million customers. The devices available must be used with an MTN SIM card as part of the agreement, and will feature pre-loaded applications focused on digital services.

MTN has partnered with Smartphone For All to facilitate distribution. The group’s founder and CEO Babatunde Osho said: “By making smartphones more accessible and affordable, we are unlocking opportunities for millions who have been left behind in the digital economy.”

Indian telco Reliance Jio reportedly acknowledged it has been using unlicenced spectrum as well as 5G spectrum to connect some customers for its 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) services, which it says is helping lower deployment costs.

According to a report from ETTelecom on Friday, Anshuman Thakur – Reliance Jio Infocomm’s head of strategy – said during a post-earnings call for Reliance Industries that Jio has been using unlicenced band radio (UBR) equipment for some FWA deployments.

Unlicenced spectrum includes bands commonly used for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, such as 2.5 GHz and 5 GHz. 3GPP Release 16 includes specifications for 5G New Radio-Unlicensed (NR-U) that enables 5G networks to use unlicenced bands below 7 GHz. 3GPP Release 17 adds unlicenced millimetre-wave bands from 57 GHz to 71 GHz to the mix.

5G NR-U is meant to give 5G operators extra spectrum options for scenarios such as carrier aggregation and offloading, but it can also be used for standalone deployments.

Thakur said that using UBR enables Jio to serve multiple users with one FWA unit, which means the deployment cost per customer is “incrementally much less”, the report said.

Jio – which launched its JioFiberAir service in 2023 – said it had 5.6 million FWA customers at the end of FY 2025, which accounts for 85% of India’s FWA market. Thakur didn’t say how many homes are using UBR equipment.

Thakur also said Jio has set a target of connecting 100 million homes via JioAirFiber and its FTTH service, JioFiber, although he gave no timeline for hitting that target, the report said.