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Several interesting items of regional interest from this week to catch up with: … [visit site to read more]

Incumbent Maldives telco Dhiraagu said on Wednesday it has extended its high-speed fibre broadband network to all inhabited islands in the Maldives in a project that took five years to complete.

At a press conference announcing the milestone, Dhiraagu CEO and MD Ismail Rasheed noted that “only a few developed countries have successfully extended 100% fibre broadband coverage to their entire population.”

While the Maldives is a small country with less than 578,000 people, it’s also a geographically challenging archipelago of close to 1,200 islands across 22 atolls. Of that, around 200 islands are inhabited. All of those islands now have access to fibre broadband services, Ismail said.

Ismail also said the rollout enhances the Maldives’ digital backbone and will fuel the growth of digital services across the country, as well as enable greater digital inclusion in island communities by expanding broadband access and lowering the cost of internet services.

Ismail credited the government, atoll councils, island councils and partners for their cooperation in rolling out the fibre broadband network, as well as the work of Dhiraagu staff.

As for the international connectivity backing that network, the islands of the Maldives archipelago are connected by several inter-island subsea cable systems, but currently its only international subsea link is to Sri Lanka via the Maldives Sri Lanka Cable (MSC), which has been in operation since 2021.

That said, the Maldives has established a landing point for the India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) subsea cable connecting Mumbai with Singapore, which will interconnect with the India-Europe-Xpress (IEX) subsea cable system connecting Mumbai with Milan, Italy, that is scheduled to be ready for service sometime in 2025.

Dhiraagu inaugurated the official landing of the SEA-ME-WE 6 subsea cable in the Maldives in August 2024. SEA-ME-WE 6 is scheduled to be ready for service in early 2026. It will also be the first international subsea cable in which a Maldives telco owns a direct stake.

Cameroon’s state-owned telco Cameroon Telecommunications (Camtel) has reportedly revealed a budget of XAF326.2 billion (US$514.7 million) for 2025 to upgrade its network infrastructure and improve service quality, along with a strategic roadmap to steward its evolution to 2027.

According to a report from TechAfrica News on Tuesday, the 2025 budget includes plans for installing new antennas and modernizing existing equipment. Meanwhile, the roadmap aims to diversify Camtel’s service offerings, enhance operational efficiency, and reinforce transparency and good governance practices over the next three years.

Both the budget and the roadmap appear geared to respond to criticism over Camtel’s service quality, the report said.

Despite that, Camtel said it is a strong position financially to implement the improvements, with revenue doubling from XAF108 billion in 2018 to XAF207 billion in 2023, while its capital has grown from XAF67 billion to XAF117 billion. Camtel also reported a net profit of XAF11 billion in 2023.

In November, Camtel’s director of strategy, organisation, project and innovation, Gilbert Ngono, told Developing Telecoms that the telco plans to conduct 5G pilots next year in Yaoundé, Douala, and selected rural locations to align with the government’s Universal Service mandate.

Meanwhile, as part of its expansion plans, Camtel aims to increase its fibre-optic network from 12,000 kilometres to between 17,000 and 22,000 kilometres. That includes a new CFA100 billion fibre backbone that will add new fibre-optic lines and routes for data traffic.

Camtel has also signed a mobile network sharing agreement with French operator group Orange to boost service quality and narrow the gap with mobile rivals Orange and MTN.

Ngono said that while Camtel holds under 5% of Cameroon’s CFA800 billion mobile market, its network expansion plans should help it achieve 10% market share within the next two years.

Three bits of international news and one interplanetary: … [visit site to read more]

Two months after Ghana saw the launch of its first 5G wholesale network, telecoms operators have yet to lease capacity from it to offer commercial 5G services, according to Minister of Communications and Digitalization Ursula Owusu.

Owusu first announced plans to introduce 5G to Ghana via a shared wholesale network model in May 2024 to help telcos save on rollout costs. To that end, Radisys, Nokia and Tech Mahindra united with Ascend Digital Solutions, telecom solutions provider K-NET, mobile network operators AT Ghana and Telecel Ghana, and the Ghanian government to launch a JV called Next-Gen InfraCo (NGIC) to build out the shared infrastructure.

NGIC was granted a ten-year exclusive licence to deploy neutral 4G and 5G infrastructure to be leased to operators, and launched its 5G wholesale network at the start of November 2024. NGIC said it would start rollouts in Accra, Kumasi, and Takoradi, with the goal of achieving national coverage by 2026.

The NGIC launch was heralded by the government and stakeholders as a pivotal move to accelerate digital inclusivity and growth in Ghana. The ministry also said rolling out a wholesale 5G network in phases would ensures rural inclusion, with subsidies to support underserved areas, as opposed to commercial 5G rollouts that are typically concentrated in urban centres.

However, since the November launch, none of Ghana’s main mobile operators – which includes NGIC stakeholders Telecel Ghana, AT Ghana, as well as MTN Ghana – have leveraged the NGIC network to launch their own 5G services, according to the Ecofin news agency.

During an interview on local television channel TV3, Owusu that the ministry has done its part to get the 5G ball rolling in Ghana, but it’s now up to operators to actively sell it.

“People didn’t listen to us at launch. This is a wholesale infrastructure. We built it, and now it’s up to telecommunications companies to buy capacity and provide it to their subscribers, » she told TV3.

The Ecofin report notes that it’s unknown if Telecel, AT Ghana and MTN have started discussions with NGIC or what the conditions of leasing 5G capacity will be. The ministry has also stopped short of providing a timeline of when it expects operators to start offering 5G services.

One sticking point may be the question of how much demand for 5G actually exists in Ghana, given that the penetration rate of 4G in the country – which has been available for the last nine years – was just 15% as of June 2024, according to government figures. The Ministry of Communications and Digitalization plans to boost that figure up to 80% by 2027.

Over the break three different M&A processes in the infrastructure space around the world steamed forward: … [visit site to read more]

Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
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We started the week with the question of consolidation targets in the US, and now it’s time for the other side of the coin.  What network operators are most likely to be consolidators in 2025?  We’ll take it as a given that ‘infrastructure funds’ would top the more general list of likely buyers, of course, but let’s focus on the existing network operators looking to expand inorganically in the US.  Last year the perennial favorite Zayo topped the list with Lightpath and T-Mobile tied for second. … [visit site to read more]

Two very different announcements regarding SIM registration have made headlines in two African countries in recent days: Togo is pursuing the policy, while Mauritius seems to be rejecting it.

The Togo First news resource says that the country is implementing new rules for SIM card registration through a recent government decree that mandates that all users of electronic communication services must be identified before accessing these services.

Not only is the sale of pre-activated or pre-identified SIM cards now banned but users can hold no more than three SIM cards per operator. In addition operators must also maintain a complete database of their subscribers and submit quarterly reports to authorities. Some of these rules were announced as long ago as 2021.

These measures, according to the authorities, aim to enhance subscriber traceability and combat fraud and cybercrime. Though recent figures do not seem to be available, Togo First says that of March 2024, Togo had about 7.3 million mobile subscribers. The present-day population is about 9.6 million.

The Republic of Mauritius is a much smaller market; it has a population of around 1,270,000 in 2025 and (in 2023) there were about 2.1 million SIM cards, arguably easier to register. However, it is now reversing its 2021 decision to put in place a framework for the registration of SIM cards, which began in 2023.

Subscribers, in other words, are no longer required to identify themselves with operators. Not only that but mobile phone operators are now required to delete the database of photographs of all those who have already registered their SIM cards.

According to the Agence Ecofin news service, the registration process was initiated on the recommendation of a Commission of Inquiry on Drugs in 2018 based on indications that some SIM cards used by tourists and foreign workers wound up in the hands of drug traffickers and their accomplices.

While it’s not clear why the authorities in Mauritius have changed tack, registration of SIM cards is still policy in a number of African countries, with security usually cited among the reasons.