Press Release

The former BT Openreach executive brings more than 25 years of broadband and wholesale telecoms experience

nexfibre, the joint venture between InfraVia Capital Partners, Liberty Global and Telefónica, today announced the appointment of Ses Indy as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), strengthening its senior leadership team as the company executes its mission to build a scaled national wholesale alternative to BT Openreach.

Indy joins nexfibre from BT Openreach and brings more than 25 years of experience across digital infrastructure and fixed telecommunications. Throughout his career, he has held senior commercial leadership roles and worked closely with major communications providers, including Sky, Vodafone and PXC with a particular focus on wholesale strategy and customer growth.

At nexfibre, Indy will lead the company’s commercial strategy, revenue growth and customer engagement activities. His appointment comes at a significant moment for the business as it progresses its planned acquisition of Netomnia, a transaction expected to unlock £3.5 billion of international investment and create a combined network footprint of approximately 8 million premises by the end of 2027.

A three-time recipient of the Sunday Times Best Places to Work award, nexfibre is continuing to scale its wholesale platform and accelerate the rollout of next-generation digital infrastructure across the UK.

Ses Indy, Chief Commercial Officer at nexfibre, said:

“I am delighted to be joining nexfibre at such an exciting and important stage in its growth journey. I look forward to working with the leadership team to drive commercial growth, deepen partner relationships and help deliver the benefits of high-quality full-fibre connectivity to homes and businesses across the country.”

Rajiv Datta, Chief Executive Officer of nexfibre, said:

“The board and I are delighted to welcome Ses to nexfibre. He brings deep industry expertise, a strong track record of commercial leadership and extensive experience of the wholesale broadband market. As we enter our next phase of growth and work towards creating a scaled national wholesale challenger, his leadership will be instrumental in expanding our commercial reach, strengthening customer partnerships and delivering on our long-term ambitions.”

How is the UK connectivity landscape changing in 2026? Join the industry in discussion at Connected Britain 2026

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Multinational cloud telephony provider, LoopUp, and leading Caribbean and Central America communications provider, Digicel, have formed a strategic partnership to sell LoopUp’s Operator Connect telephony platform and service for Microsoft Teams across the Caribbean region.

Service will be offered to the enterprise market, leveraging Digicel’s extensive reach, in-country presence, and trusted business relationships. Customers will be able to integrate their regionwide business telephony with Teams in accordance with Microsoft’s certified deployment model, Operator Connect. Users will be able to make and receive calls from any device running Teams, benefiting from a simple and unified communications experience, and enterprises will be able to make significant cost savings by eliminating all legacy PBX equipment.

“Partnering with Digicel is a significant milestone in LoopUp’s international expansion,” said Steve Flavell Co-CEO of LoopUp. “Not only are we bringing the first Operator Connect capability to the region with Digicel, but we’re also extending our market-leading global country coverage for our multinational enterprise customers, who are headquartered elsewhere in the world but have operations throughout the region.”

For Digicel Business customers, the partnership adds a flagship, next-generation enterprise voice capability to the operator’s growing portfolio of cloud services. Digicel Business serves thousands of organizations across sectors including financial services, hospitality, government, and energy, many of whom have standardized on Microsoft Teams, and are now looking to bring their telephony under that Teams-first, unified communications umbrella.

“Our customers are asking for smarter, simpler ways to communicate,” said Liam Donnelly, Chief Business Officer for Digicel Group, “and Microsoft Teams has become the platform of choice for many of them. By partnering with LoopUp, we can give our enterprise customers a seamless, fully managed Teams telephony experience, regionwide and now globally, leveraging the simpler and more cost-effective Microsoft-certified Operator Connect approach and backed by the local support and network reach only Digicel can provide.”

The service will be available to Digicel Business customers from July 2026.

About LoopUp

LoopUp helps multinational enterprises consolidate how they buy and manage their global Microsoft Teams telephony, offering phone numbers and full cloud-based, PSTN-replacement service in more than 100 countries around the world. We liberate multinationals from the frustrations, complexities and inefficiencies of working with multiple regional carriers, each with their own contracts, pricing, support teams and management portals. LoopUp offers a single and consistent global solution, combining design, deployment, service delivery and support – provided globally and all integrated with Microsoft Teams and bringing calling data into the enterprise AI dataset. LoopUp is headquartered in London with operations around the world.

About Digicel

Digicel is a leading digital connectivity and communications provider, delivering modern wireless and fiber networks across 25 markets in the Caribbean, Central and South America. Serving nine million customers through mobile, home, and business solutions, they play a critical role in enabling economic participation and digital inclusion in the region. Their commitment to strong governance, inclusive access, and long-term value creation is embedded in how they operate every day. Backed by their DIGI values – Diversity, Integrity, Growth, and Innovation – their 5,000 employees are focused on driving impact for the customers, communities, and countries they serve.

For more information, please visit: https://www.digicelgroup.com/

Three interesting new regional fiber projects, one by a new name: … [visit site to read more]

Airtel Africa reduced diesel consumption by 9.1 million litres during its 2025/26 financial year as the operator accelerated efforts to lower emissions and improve the sustainability of its network operations.

The operator achieved the reduction by decreasing its reliance on diesel generators and converting 390 network sites to grid power, improving energy efficiency while cutting carbon emissions.

Speaking at a media briefing in the Zambian capital of Lusaka,  Airtel Africa CEO Sunil Taldar said responsible growth remains central to the company’s strategy, balancing network expansion with environmental stewardship, digital inclusion and socio-economic development.

As part of its wider sustainability programme, Airtel Africa also recycled 94% of the waste generated across its operations during the year as it continued promoting circular economy initiatives.

The operator’s network now covers 81.9% of the population across its 14 African markets, while its mobile money business continued to expand. Airtel Money ended the year with 54.1 million customers supported by 2.4 million agents, with women accounting for 44.1% of its customer base.

News

The fibre and fixed wireless access (FWA) specialist has struggled to attract customers to use its network at scale

Following a strategic review, alternative network provider Airband has begun a formal sale process.

Related documents were sent to prospective buyers this week, with the company seeking “the right long-term owner”.

It could also face debt restructuring, according to two anonymous sources speaking to the Financial Times.

“Following a strategic review of the business and its future ownership, Airband has commenced a formal sale process to identify the right long-term owner for the company,” a spokesperson told ISPreview. “Airband continues to operate and trade as normal throughout the process. Our network remains fully operational and there is no impact on customer services or day-to-day operations.”

Airband’s full fibre network currently covers around 175,000 premises and a further 265,000 are covered by FWA. Of this total footprint of around 440,000 premises, only around 30,000 premises are customers – far below the level the company would need to recoup the costs of its expensive network deployment in the short term.

Airband has been struggling to improve its position for years, with its first round of restructuring and job cuts taking place in 2024. More changes and redundancies were announced earlier this year, with the company claiming it was shifting its focus to “transitioning towards operational maturity, with a focus on long-term sustainability, enhanced customer experience and efficient delivery.”

Airband’s operating loss this year increased to £47.23 million, with total liabilities of over £224 million. Total assets were reported at £179.81 million.

Exactly who might purchase Airband remains unclear. The UK’s largest altnet, CityFibre, has long had ambitions of being the UK’s key fibre network consolidator, notably earmarking around £800 million of its £2.3 billion in fresh funding last year for M&A. However, the company has been facing its own financial challenges of late, largely related to its £3.7 billion in debt that was restructured in January.

Virgin Media O2 and its sister company nexfibre would be the next obvious choice, but these parties already have their hands full with the £2 billion acquisition of Netomnia.

At a time when altnets across the country are looking to make deals, finding a suitable partner could be a lengthy process.

How is the UK connectivity landscape changing in 2026? Join the industry in discussion at Connected Britain 2026

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Three metro expansion projects and one bit of M&A news: … [visit site to read more]

Sri Lankan telco Dialog Axiata announced on Tuesday it has launched Dialog Pay, a unified payments and financial services ecosystem designed to boost adoption of digital payments.

Dialog Pay – which is an integrated platform within the MyDialog App, but also available as a standalone app – enables customers to make LankaQR payments, transfer funds, access their digital wallet, open savings accounts and fixed deposits, and apply for loans powered by Dialog Finance, without having to switch between multiple applications.

Customers can activate Dialog Pay with their eZ Cash accounts, or link their preferred bank account to the app.

Dialog Axiata said it is also rebranding its existing Genie digital wallet as Dialog Pay as part of the new launch.

Dialog Axiata group CEO Supun Weerasinghe said Dialog Pay supports the government’s recently launched Lanka QR Payment Promotion Programme to drive adoption of digital payments in Sri Lanka, and aims to make it easier for customers to manage payments and financial services.

“We are thankful to our partners for joining us in this national initiative and look forward to working alongside all stakeholders to accelerate digital payment adoption across the country,” he said in a statement.

News

The Thai telco is questioning the validity of a newly reported $1 billion stake in the business

The Thai Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is under scrutiny this week after individual investor, identified as Supaporn Pimphong, has reported a trade bringing her ownership of telco True Corporation to 7% – but the telco says it has doubts the trade really took place.

The discrepancy came to light when True asked the SEC to verify a filing showing Supaporn had acquired a roughly a 3.2% stake from UBS Group AG on June 15.

This acquisition would raise Supaporn’s position to around 7.1%, worth around 32.5 billion Baht ($1 billion), making her one of True’s largest stakeholders.

Further confusing matters, Supaporn’s filing claimed the purchase included both ordinary shares and a block of ‘preferred shares’. True Corp, however, says it has never issued preferred shares and have none outstanding in their capital structure.

The SEC has subsequently launched a probe into the matter.

An individual investment of this scale is always noteworthy, but the lack of information surrounding Supaporn’s identity makes the apparent mistakes in this filing particularly concerning.

Initial investigations into her identity by Thai media outlet Khao Hoon uncovered no information regarding her business background, investment track record, or preexisting wealth portfolio. What they did find, however, was that since 2018 Supaporn had filed massive ownership positions in major Thai blue-chip companies, including a 49% stake in GJS Steel and positions over 5% in Bangkok Bank, Kasikornbank, an Asia Aviation. Combined, these stakes would be worth around $1.5 billion, not including Supaporn’s supposed $1 billion stake in True.

The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) and the respective companies’ shareholder registries have since confirmed that none of these positions officially exist.

So, what exactly is going on here? It seems highly likely that Supaporn does not really exist, but what is the point of the deception?

One theory is that this is a form of stock market ‘pump and dump’, with the fake positions being filed to artificially inflate stock prices before the sale of the owner’s real shares.

Another theory, proposed by Kasikorn Securities, suggests that the transfer of shares may have indeed taken place, with the Supaporn filing used to conceal the identity of the real final owner and mask financial restructuring.

The report notes that the True transaction perfectly aligns with UBS AG London Branch acquiring shares from Charoen Pokphand Group, a billionaire conglomerate and True Corp’s largest shareholder.

Regardless of the whether the transaction in fact took place here, the finding severely undermines the viability of the SEC’s reporting mechanism. The filing of a Form 246-2 requires encrypted user registration, identity verification against a national database, and validation of the underlying assets being traded by a brokerage; if these guardrails are somehow compromised, the validity of all the SEC’s public financial disclosures could be at risk.

The SEC is currently working with the SET for an emergency overhaul of their combined data infrastructure to address any weaknesses, but it could be some time before the extent of these systemic issues are fully revealed.

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Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) will extend the tenure of President Director and Chief Executive Officer Vikram Sinha for another five years, subject to shareholder approval at the company’s upcoming Annual General Meeting.

The operator said the decision reflects the board’s confidence in Sinha’s leadership as IOH moves into the “next phase of its transformation”, with artificial intelligence becoming a key focus of its business strategy.

Sinha has been with Indosat Ooredoo since 2019 and oversaw the operator’s massive merger in 2022, in which Indosat joined up with Hutchison 3 Indonesia.

Looking ahead, the company plans to increase investment in AI across its network, enterprise offerings and digital services, while supporting the development of Indonesia’s domestic AI ecosystem.

The board also reaffirmed its support for IOH’s long-term financial target of doubling EBITDA, signalling confidence in the company’s growth strategy.

“Indosat has demonstrated the value of consistent execution and long-term strategic focus,” said President Commissioner Nezar Patria. “As the company enters its next stage of growth, the Board remains confident in Vikram Sinha’s leadership and the management team’s ability to deliver sustainable value for shareholders and contribute to Indonesia’s digital development.”

IOH claimed that AI is already being deployed across Indosat’s operations to improve network performance, automate internal processes, optimise capital investment and enhance customer engagement through more personalised digital services.

The operator is also expanding beyond connectivity by building capabilities in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity and enterprise digital solutions. As part of this strategy, IOH  developed its sovereign AI initiatives, including open source LLM Sahabat-AI, NeoCloud and GPU cloud services, supported by partnerships with technology companies such as Nvidia.

Another priority is the development of a distributed AI computing infrastructure using Indosat’s nationwide network and data centre assets. The company says this will provide enterprises, developers and public sector organisations with greater access to AI computing resources across Indonesia.