This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Gerry Christensen, Special Contributor to Telecom Ramblings

The regulatory architecture of the U.S. voice network is undergoing a structural renovation. On October 29, 2025, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted a sweeping multi-part item at its October Open Meeting, releasing a consolidated Ninth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM) and Public Notice.

While the headline goal remains the ongoing battle against illegal robocalls, … [visit site to read more]

Vietnamese state telco VNPT announced on Thursday it has signed a comprehensive agreement with PVcomBank to expand cooperation in the areas of digital finance, digital payments and digital transformation between now and 2030.

Under the agreement, VNPT and PVcomBank will jointly research and develop new products and services, and implement many of VNPT’s digital technology solutions in banking operations such as eKYC, biometric identification, digital signatures, electronic contracts, AI, cloud, data centre and information security solutions.

In a Facebook post, VNPT said the combination of its technological capabilities and PVcomBank’s experience in the finance and banking sector “is expected to bring smarter, more convenient, and safer transaction experiences to customers, while contributing to promoting cashless payments and the development of the digital economy in Vietnam.”

According to state news site Vietnam Plus, the two firms will also develop co-branded products, services and new distribution models on digital platforms, as well as explore ways to cooperate in “non-banking finance, investment and business development”.

The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) has said it has surpassed 241,000 active .ng domain names, less than a quarter of the one million active-domain target that NiRA set in 2019 for achievement by 2024.

The figure does, however, mark a recovery in registrations since  2022, when the number of active .ng domains fell to 179,420. Over the last 12 months, the association recorded 98,285 new registrations, 71,470 renewals and 1,970 restored domains.

However, as NIRA President Akinsola Adesanya pointed out earlier this week during an internet governance forum, Nigeria’s domain name penetration remains significantly below its potential despite more than two decades of managing the .ng registry.

Indeed, as the Ecofin news agency points out, for a country of an estimated 242 million people, 241,000 active .ng domains is a fairly modest total.

South Africa, by contrast, has about 1.4 million active country-code domains, while Kenya, with less than a quarter of the population of Nigeria, has 115,000 active domains. 

However, low domain name adoption has thrown up other problems, according to local news resource Punch, which reports that Nigeria is losing an estimated US$850 million annually due to weak adoption of its national digital identity infrastructure.

At the third edition of NiRA’s Tech Convergence conference, held in Abuja in early June, speakers warned that Nigeria’s continued reliance on foreign domains, offshore hosting and non-indigenous digital platforms is not only exporting revenue but also weakening jurisdictional control over citizens’ data and, one assumes, undermining data sovereignty.

NiRA backed this up, saying the losses stem from Nigeria’s limited use of local digital infrastructure, including domain registration, data hosting and digital services, which instead route economic value to foreign jurisdictions.

The association said expanding adoption of .ng could help retain revenue, improve data security, reduce latency and stimulate domestic cloud and digital infrastructure industries. NiRA has in fact set a new objective of achieving annual growth of 30%.

How this will happen is still not clear. Stakeholders at the conference called for policy reforms to deepen local digital adoption, including proposals to mandate .ng domains for businesses and integrate them into national education and public service systems.

Beyond registration growth, NiRA has implemented Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), a technology designed to improve the security, authenticity and resilience of domain-name services.

NiRA is also modernising its internal systems and revising its governing framework to align its operations with international standards. These measures aim to improve trust in the .ng ecosystem while creating a stronger foundation for future growth.

There are also plans for a new .ng Ambassador Programme aimed at driving awareness and adoption of Nigeria’s national domain across government, industry and academia.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has signed a global partnership with AI company Anthropic to help enterprises deploy generative AI at scale, with a particular focus on highly regulated industries.

As part of the deal, TCS will establish a dedicated business unit focused on developing industry-specific solutions and services based on Anthropic’s Claude family of AI models. The partnership will target sectors including financial services, healthcare, life sciences, telecoms, aviation and public services.

TCS said the partnership is aimed at helping enterprises move AI projects beyond the pilot stage, particularly in industries where strict requirements around accuracy, governance and regulatory compliance have slowed adoption.

The Indian IT giant will also deploy Claude internally, providing access to 50,000 employees across engineering, finance, legal, marketing and sales functions. The company said the experience gained from its own AI transformation will be used to support customer deployments.

Beyond enterprise services, the partnership will extend to several TCS platforms and business units. TCS iON, which conducts more than 75 million assessments annually across India, will introduce training and certification programmes focused on Claude AI models.

The companies also plan to develop AI solutions for domain-specific workflows, software development, IT operations, customer experience and business modernisation projects.

TCS CEO K Krithivasan said the partnership combines Anthropic’s AI capabilities with TCS’ industry expertise and large-scale implementation experience to help enterprises deploy AI in production environments rather than limited pilot projects.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the agreement strengthens the company’s presence in India, its second-largest market, while expanding access to Claude across global enterprises.

KKR, Nvidia, the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) and power company Vistra have launched Helix Digital Infrastructure, a new company backed by more than US$10 billion in capital to build AI infrastructure for hyperscalers.

The company aims to simplify the deployment of AI infrastructure by acting as a single provider for data centres, power generation, connectivity and related infrastructure. Helix will target growing demand from hyperscalers as AI workloads drive a surge in investment across digital infrastructure.

Former Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky will lead Helix as CEO, while KKR’s Global Head of Digital Infrastructure, Waldemar Szlezak, will serve as chief investment officer.

The company plans to invest across hyperscale data centres, power generation, transmission infrastructure and fibre networks. Nvidia will act as a strategic technology partner, supporting deployments based on its AI factory architecture, while Vistra will serve as Helix’s preferred power supplier.

The launch comes as AI is driving what KKR described as one of the largest infrastructure buildouts in history, with demand for data centres and electricity increasing rapidly. Industry estimates suggest trillions of dollars will be required over the next decade to support AI-related infrastructure globally.

Helix said it will provide hyperscalers with a more integrated approach to infrastructure deployment, reducing the complexity of coordinating multiple suppliers across power, connectivity and data centre construction.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said demand for AI infrastructure continues to accelerate as cloud providers race to expand AI capacity.

The company is backed by KKR’s infrastructure platform, which manages more than US$100 billion in infrastructure assets globally. Following the initial funding round, Helix said it is open to additional institutional investors.

This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Dario Betti, CEO, Mobile Ecosystem Forum

UK-based Gamma Communications is drawing the attention of several suitors; Providence Equity Partners is in talks, and there is also confirmed interest from Epiris and a consortium backed by Oakley Capital with Giacom.  A takeover of Gamma—valued at about $1.2 billion—could impact partnerships, competition and investment across Europe’s business communications sector. … [visit site to read more]

A mix of infrastructure products from around the industry: … [visit site to read more]

Four bits of partnership news and one M&A. … [visit site to read more]

Alibaba Cloud said on Tuesday it has launched a new public cloud region in Johor, Malaysia backed by two new data centres to meet the country’s growing demand for cloud and AI services – particuarly agentic AI.

The new facilities in Johor offer cloud computing products from compute, storage, container, networking, big data, security, and databases to cloud-native services.

Alibaba Cloud said it also plans to introduce a suite of agentic AI services to Malaysia in the second half of this year to meet growing demand for enterprise agents in the region.

Agentic AI products planned for launch in Malaysia include AgentRun, a one-stop intelligent agent development and build platform; STAROps, a comprehensive intelligent operations platform; ACS Agent Sandbox, which provides hardware-level security isolation while reducing operational costs of AI agents; Agent Security Center, an integrated defence platform for AI agents; AI Security Guardrails 2.0, an upgraded security solution with end-to-end risk detection capabilities; and Agentic SOC, an enterprise-grade, AI agent-driven security operations platform.

Alibaba Cloud said the new products are designed to streamline the building and running of enterprise-scale agents in a secure environment, providing enterprises with full cycle management of agent engineering.

Alibaba Cloud has been operating in Malaysia since 2017. The launch of Johor region and its two data centres brings Alibaba Cloud’s total data centre footprint in Malaysia to five facilities, which marks its largest infrastructure presence in Southeast Asia so far, said Choong Hon Keat, GM of Malaysia for Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

“This expansion in Malaysia is a direct response to surging customer demand as local businesses scale cloud-native operations and integrate AI at scale,” he said in a statement. “Our new data centres in Johor will enable us to deliver more resilient, low-latency services, helping companies innovate faster, scale securely, and operate with greater efficiency in the AI era.”

Including Johor, Alibaba Cloud’s global infrastructure now comprises 104 availability zones across 32 regions.

The Johor facility is part of Alibaba’s previously announced plan in February 2025 to invest US$53 billion globally in AI and cloud infrastructure. In August last year, the company launched its third data centre in Malaysia whilst also announcing plans to expand its presence in Southeast Asia with new data centres in Malaysia and the Philippines.