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The operator says reintegrating the tower assets will strengthen its African operations and improve financial metrics

African telco giant MTN Group is set to take full control of IHS Towers, one of Africa’s largest independent tower companies, in a deal valued at $6.2 billion.

The deal will see MTN acquire the 75% stake in IHS that it doesn’t already own for $2.2 billion in cash.

“This proposed transaction is a pivotal step in further strengthening MTN Group’s strategic and financial position for a future where digital infrastructure will become ever more essential to Africa’s growth and development. This transaction gives us a unique opportunity to buy back our towers and strengthen our ability to be partners for progress to the nation states in which we operate,” said MTN CEO Ralph Mupita.

The deal is subject to the typical regulatory approvals, with watchdogs likely to look closely at the impact on competition, given IHS also rents their infrastructure to MTN’s rivals across Africa.

For MTN, the move represents something of a strategic U-turn. The operator group has pursued an asset-light approach for the past decade, selling many of its towers – largely to IHS – in multiple markets.

In recent years, however, MTN’s relationship with the tower company has grown more complicated. The operator has repeatedly complained about IHS’s corporate governance, particularly that IHS had capped its voting rights at 20%, despite MTN owning a stake of around 26% in the business.

At the same time, IHS saw major losses from the devaluation of the Nigerian naira in 2023, leading MTN to attempt to seek adjusted lease terms to reduce foreign‑currency exposure.

Given this increasingly difficult operating relationship, MTN’s stake acquisition represents an opportunity to simplify and de-risk the company’s balance sheet by removing long‑term lease liabilities.

Market watchers will be watching whether MTN’s reintegration of roughly 29,000 African sites delivers the financial and strategic gains management forecasts, and whether rivals respond with selective buybacks, new sharing deals, or continued reliance on independent towercos.

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Google has announced an investment of US$500 million in the construction of submarine cables and an international digital exchange port for the Dominican Republic. This will apparently be the company’s eighth digital exchange port in the world and the first in Latin America.

This is also said to be the first international submarine cable ring to the continental United States from the Dominican Republic.

The company will develop an open and neutral infrastructure with the capacity to host four new international submarine cables. A first phase will involve the installation of two new submarine cables between the Dominican Republic and the United States, which will be added to the existing one between the two countries. Construction will begin in March.

Dominican President Luis Abinader signed a decree late last week, declaring the construction of digital exchange ports and the installation, deployment, and operation of submarine cable systems a matter of high national priority. 

Local press reports say the decree seeks to strengthen digital infrastructure, expand international connectivity, and position the Dominican Republic as a regional hub for artificial intelligence.

Indeed, the thinking is that a digital exchange port will place the Dominican Republic at the centre of information exchange between North America, Central America and South America.

The new infrastructure will make it possible to multiply by ten the number of fibre optic pairs that currently connect the two territories, in addition to offering diversified connectivity and reduced latency to the South Carolina and Virginia Google Cloud regions in the US.

According to the BNamericas news service, the country has five other submarine cables in operation that connect it with Caribbean territories and, from there, with the continent, although some are approaching the end of their useful life.

According to the government, internet traffic in the Dominican Republic has increased 500% in the last five years; more than 35% comes from the United States.

Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly a strong government focus. Last year the Dominican Republic signed an agreement with AI and accelerated computing company Nvidia, to establish a Centre of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence (CEIA).

Also last year, the regulator Indotel and the Centro de Inteligencia Pública (CIP) signed a cooperation agreement to create an AI academy in the country, to accelerate training in AI.

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Nigerian operators have settled a long-running unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) payment dispute with commercial banks. It seems that, five years after the dispute began, all outstanding payments have now been made.

The Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), the official industry body for all providers of telecommunications and subsidiary services in Nigeria, said late last week that banks had cleared all outstanding balances related to USSD services. ALTON chairman Gbenga Adebayo said the repayment covered nearly ₦300 billion (about US$200 million).

USSD is a messaging protocol used by GSM cellular networks to enable instant, two-way communication between mobile phones and applications. It works without internet or data, making it ideal for mobile banking, balance checks and network services.

This issue apparently originated as a result of unpaid corporate invoicing for mobile banking sessions, leading to operators threatening several banks with disconnection.

And not just operators. Indeed, we reported in January 2025 that regulator the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) had issued an ultimatum for nine banks to pay up on their USSD codes or be disconnected before the end of that month.

News service ITWeb Africa reports that to prevent a repeat of this situation, an end-user billing framework has been adopted. Under this model, customers are charged directly from airtime balances rather than banks settling bulk invoices.

It explains that fees are set at ₦6.98 (about US$0.005) per 120-second session and only apply after users approve the charge and complete a successful transaction.

Despite the growing take-up of smartphones across the country USSD is still essential for reaching millions of Nigerians without smartphones or reliable internet, particularly in rural and low-income communities.

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The Kuwait Authority for Partnership Projects (KAPP) has reportedly secured conditional approval from the State Audit Bureau (SAB) to award a KWD19.9 million (US$64.8 million) contract for a project to modernise Kuwait’s fixed-line telecoms infrastructure.

According to the Arab Times, KAPP submitted the tender on January 14 to SAB, which approved it this past Tuesday.

The project – which is being implemented by KAPP and the Ministry of Communications – aims to deploy a fibre optic network that will reach least 90% of homes by 2028, with data speeds initially as high as 10 Gbps, the report said.

The project covers design, financing, construction, operation, maintenance and transformation of the ministry’s fixed-line networks, including active and passive infrastructure, as well as the copper fixed-line network, the report added.

The winning company – which has not been publicly disclosed – will operate the ministry’s existing network and expand it to cover all areas.

The report said that the fixed-line project will also provide the foundation for launching smart city services, as well as help the government achieve its ‘New Kuwait 2035’ vision by strengthening its digital infrastructure.

Moreover, it could help boost income for the ministry, which gets most of its income from fixed-line service fees, which have been declining as users switch to 4G and 5G mobile services from Zain, Ooredoo, STC and Virgin Mobile. By the end of 2024, Kuwait was already ranked third globally in Ookla’s Speed Test Global Index, with average mobile data speeds of 258.51 Mbps.

Telkom Indonesia’s intermational arm Telin announed on Thursday it is partnering with IPification to commercialize its Mobile Network Verification (MNV) solution, which leverages Telkom’s network APIs to authenticate users without the need for OTPs.

The MNV solution, which based on IPification’s mobile identity technology, has already been launched commercially by Telkom’s mobile unit Telkomsel, and is now available across more than 40 mobile networks worldwide.

Telin said its global network reach and operator relationships enables enterprises to authenticate users with a single user tap in which they consent to the use of the network data.

Network API-based authentication has been touted as a more secure and convenient alternative to SMS OTPs, which are vulnerable to phishing scams, SIM swaps, and bot attacks.

« Digital identity works best when it’s built into the infrastructure users already rely on, » said IPification CEO Stefan Kostic. « Together with Telin, we’re enabling authentication that happens at the network level – removing unnecessary friction while giving enterprises a more secure and reliable way to verify users. »

Telin said the MNV service enables organisations in areas like finance, e-commerce, gaming, OTT platforms and public services make authentication easier for users, as well as protect themselves from phishing and account takeovers. It also gives mobile operators a potential new revenue stream by turning network intelligence into high-value API services.

“This is an important development for the OTT developer community and mobile network operators, as it enhances authentication options while complementing existing SMS-based authentication revenue,” said John Tolton, SVP for messaging mobile identity and voice at Telin.

Telkomsel has been a member of the GSMA Open Gateway initiative for standardised network APIs since February 2024. The same month, it launched Number Verification, SIM Swap and Device Location services based on CAMARA Open Gateway APIs. Telkomsel formed an alliance with rivals (and fellow Open Gateway members) Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and XLSmart in September 2025 to adopt a unified telco API protocol based on the CAMARA standard.

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The move comes as the company pledges “to embed AI across manufacturing, logistics, energy, finance, retail, agriculture and healthcare” throughout India

Reliance Industries, owner of India’s biggest telco Reliance Jio, has announced plans to invest $109.8 billion over the next seven years to expand India’s AI data centre footprint.

Speaking at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi today, Reliance owner and Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, said that the investments would see the conglomerate deploy sovereign gigawatt (GW)-scale data centres to handle the country’s growing demand for AI.

“I would like to announce that Jio will play an even bigger role in India’s AI transformation,” said Ambani. “This is not a speculative investment. It is not for chasing valuation. This is patient, disciplined, nation-building capital, designed to create durable economic value and strategic resilience for six decades to come.”

During his speech, Ambani said the biggest bottleneck for AI in India was the limited availability of compute infrastructure, which risked driving up costs for consumers. By rapidly expanding the availability of this infrastructure, Reliance hopes to make AI affordable across the country.

“India cannot afford to rent intelligence. Therefore, we will reduce the cost of intelligence dramatically as we did the cost of data,” Ambani said.

Reliance Jio is already building a massive data centre campus in Jamnagar, ultimately aiming for 3 GW of total capacity. The first 120 MW are expected to come online in the second half of 2026, according to Ambani.

In addition to expanding its data centre footprint, Reliance’s investment strategy also focusses on building more localised compute infrastructure (i.e., edge computing facilities). By processing data closer to the edge, customers will be able to leverage AI with lower latency.

Of course, all this new AI infrastructure will require an immense amount of power. For this, Reliance says it is leveraging its 10 GW of renewable energy from solar farms in Gujarat and the Andhra Pradesh. This, Ambani says, is not only makes the project sustainable, but also cheaper for Indian customers.

It is worth noting, however, that Reliance is not alone in aiming to become India’s leading domestic data centre player. Earlier this week, Adani Enterprises – owned by India’s second-richest man Gautam Adani – said it would invest $100 billion to build renewable energy-powered AI-ready data centres by 2035.

The battle for AI data centre dominance in India is only just beginning.

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