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Category: Telecom

Retail News Asia is committed to providing both local and global retailers with the latest Telecom & Telco news throughout the Asian market. This on a daily base.

  • Japan Forms AI Cyber Unit as PHP Flaws Disrupt Transport and Banks

    Japan Forms AI Cyber Unit as PHP Flaws Disrupt Transport and Banks

    Japan will set up a dedicated team to simulate artificial-intelligence cyberattacks after flaws in the PHP programming language forced corporate shutdowns across Tokyo.

    The disruption hit core consumer services across banking, aviation, rail and telecommunications on Friday as engineers scrambled to patch the open-source code underpinning major commercial platforms.

    Disruptions Hit Transport and Telecoms

    SoftBank suspended its mobile emergency alert system while it conducted system maintenance to fix the vulnerability. The outage meant mobile subscribers could not receive early warnings for earthquakes, tsunami alerts, or evacuation directives across the carrier’s network.

    East Japan Railway cut access to several internet services before restoring a portion of group operations on Friday. Carrier ANA, brokerage Nomura and lender Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group also took web portals and service channels offline as emergency containment measures took effect.

    Public administration tools suffered parallel shutdowns. The Ministry of Finance, the National Tax Agency, and the Meteorological Agency all halted selected online public services while technicians tested internal systems against external exploit traffic.

    Corporate Exposure Across Japanese Operations

    Commercial operators in Japan maintain deep digital records that automated attack scripts can now probe without traditional Japanese-language friction. AI automation allows attackers to scan corporate stacks, draft tailored phishing attacks, and find exposed interfaces without human translation hurdles.

    Nippon Paint applied a security patch and restored its corporate web presence after pulling systems off the public internet. Most consumer-facing networks face immediate exposure because legacy internal infrastructure across Japan relies heavily on long-standing PHP deployments rather than modern isolated microservices.

    Trend Micro chief executive Eva Chen noted that companies in the market have relied on language barriers and perceived infrastructure stability that no longer protect corporate networks from rapid automated scanning.

    Coordinated Patching and State Response

    PHP developers released critical fixes on Wednesday after discovering that flaws had lingered undetected within the software for years. Maintainers urged enterprise users globally to patch running software immediately.

    “An attack can succeed by getting through just one hole … For that reason it’s important we shift our mindset and think from the perspective of the attacker,” Japanese industry minister Ryosei Akazawa said on Friday.

    Akazawa confirmed that state defense teams will mirror automated attacker methods to probe operational resilience before threat actors exploit remaining unpatched systems.

    The Next Restoration Steps

    Transport networks and commercial banks must clear remaining back-office systems before fully restoring external interfaces. JR East said the rest of its suspended group digital services will return to normal operation as individual units confirm their patches hold.

  • Jio Platforms Reaches Fourfold Bookings in $3.2 Billion Mumbai Offering

    Jio Platforms Reaches Fourfold Bookings in $3.2 Billion Mumbai Offering

    Investors placed orders for more than four times the available shares in the US$3.2 billion initial public offering of Jio Platforms on its second day of bidding in Mumbai.

    Retail investors absorbed their full reserved portion inside the first two hours of trade on Thursday, booking 1.29 times the shares set aside for them.

    The listing gives Jio Platforms an equity valuation of up to US$108.3 billion. Institutional investors led the order book earlier in the week, with qualified institutional buyers bidding 9.78 times their allocation by the close of the second day, according to exchange data. The transaction represents the first public share sale from parent Reliance Industries in two decades, ranking as the largest equity offering ever mounted in India.

    Institutional Demand Sets Fast Pace

    Bidding dynamics broke normal patterns for large Indian initial offerings, where institutional buyers typically wait until the final afternoon to commit capital. The overall offering was filled within 90 minutes of opening on the first day, driven by institutions that snapped up their portion within minutes. Demand then spread into the retail tranche, which accounts for approximately one third of the total offering.

    Akash Ambani leads the telecoms business, which generates roughly 90 per cent of total revenue across Jio Platforms. The enterprise expanded on a simple business premise initiated in 2016: give away voice calls, discount wireless data sharply, and force rival networks into retreat. That playbook stripped millions of users away from incumbent operators Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea. Jio now counts more than 500 million subscribers, trailing only China Mobile among single-country network operators worldwide.

    Consumer Cash Flows Fund Network Upgrade

    For consumer-facing brands and digital retailers in India, the transaction secures the capital base of the country’s most pervasive digital gateway. Jio Platforms bundles high-speed connectivity with digital payments, cloud hosting, streaming, and retail interfaces. Controlling that digital pipeline gives Reliance use over consumer touchpoints that pure-play retailers and internet startups cannot match.

    The core operating risk rests on business mix. While parent Reliance Industries markets Jio as a digital and artificial intelligence platform, telecoms access fees still provide nine out of every ten dollars entering the business. Expanding into home broadband, 5G services, and cloud products requires sustained capital deployment, exposing the business to prolonged payback cycles if monetisation beyond connectivity lags expectations.

    Building the Conglomerate Consumer Arm

    Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani flagged the public share sale in June, framing the listing as part of a transformation from refining and chemicals manufacturing toward a consumer, retail, and tech conglomerate. Shares of parent company Reliance Industries have appreciated roughly 330-fold on the Mumbai exchange since 1990, establishing the group as a core holding for domestic retail accounts.

    Public bidding runs through a three-day window before closing. Unconditional trading in Jio Platforms shares is scheduled to start on October 28 in Mumbai, where the market will price the company directly against India’s highest-capitalised corporate listings.

  • Converge ICT Lifts Capital Spending to PHP20 Billion to Challenge PLDT

    Converge ICT Lifts Capital Spending to PHP20 Billion to Challenge PLDT

    Converge ICT will raise capital spending by 13 percent this year to PHP20 billion as founders Dennis Anthony and Maria Grace Uy push fiber networks into remote Philippine provinces.

    The expansion targets residential and corporate connectivity in areas beyond Metro Manila, where the operator already serves more than 3 million home subscribers and generates PHP44.8 billion in annual revenue.

    That subscriber base gives the company about one-third of the domestic broadband market, placing it ahead of Globe Telecom and second only to market leader PLDT. Dennis Anthony Uy acts as chief executive officer, while Maria Grace Uy serves as president, managing finance and network rollout budgets.

    Expanding Provincial Fiber Reach

    Capital deployed across the business since 2012 exceeds PHP120 billion, funding a terrestrial network that spans more than 900,000 kilometers of fiber-optic cabling. The network was constructed as a pure end-to-end fiber system, bypassing the legacy copper infrastructure maintained by older telecom incumbents.

    Most customer additions now originate outside the capital region. Provincial demand for home broadband and commercial links continues to outpace urban centers where household connectivity has reached saturation.

    To support corporate clients and regional traffic, the company completed a PHP5-billion data center in Angeles City, Pampanga, in March. The facility provides an initial capacity of 12 megawatts, with physical floor space engineered to scale up to 32 megawatts as client workloads grow.

    Pressure on Household Wallets

    Telecom infrastructure in the archipelago faces structural margin pressure from elevated inflation, which squeezes low-income household budgets and slows new fiber sign-ups. For consumer-facing businesses and digital platforms, broadband penetration outside the capital dictates how quickly online shopping and digital payments can expand.

    Retail banks and retail platforms require stable fixed-line connectivity in second-tier cities to support decentralized distribution networks. If household churn rises because families cut discretionary subscriptions, operators must rely on enterprise data traffic and enterprise hosting to protect returns on heavy fiber assets.

    Market valuation has contracted alongside that consumer belt-tightening. Company shares dropped approximately 40 percent this year, reducing the founders’ combined equity valuation to $850 million from an earlier peak of $2.8 billion.

    From Cable Roots to Public Markets

    Dennis Anthony Uy started the underlying operations in 1991 by building a cable television network from his family home in Pampanga, which led to the creation of ComClark Network and Technology six years later. Converge started as a subsidiary in 2007, securing rights to lay lines for Global Destiny Cable before constructing proprietary infrastructure across Pampanga and neighboring provinces and entering Manila in 2013.

    Commercial banks initially balked at funding national expansion when the company counted just 73,000 subscribers in 2016. The founders mortgaged personal family real estate to fund buildouts until private equity investor Warburg Pincus injected $225 million in 2019.

    That private capital carried the operator into an initial public offering on the Philippine Stock Exchange during 2020. The listing raised more than $500 million, capitalizing on stay-at-home demand during the pandemic as the customer register soared to 1.7 million subscribers in 2021.

    Next Steps for Enterprise Capacity

    Management is directing the next phase of capital toward public-sector IT contracts and enterprise cloud services to diversify revenue away from residential billing. The target is closing the gap with PLDT, which counts backing from Indonesian tycoon Anthoni Salim.

    Watch the Angeles City data center absorption rate over the coming quarters as enterprise clients take up power racks. The key test will be whether enterprise contracts can absorb the company’s PHP20 billion annual network spend while consumer broadband additions slow.

  • Tencent Deploys Retail AI Suite Across 600 Asian Merchants

    Tencent Deploys Retail AI Suite Across 600 Asian Merchants

    Tencent Smart Retail rolled out its artificial intelligence enterprise software suite to 600 retail clients across Asia during an industry summit in Hong Kong. The deployment targets merchants across 30 retail sectors, connecting automated operational software directly into Tencent Cloud and the broader Weixin, WeCom and Mini Programs network.

    Terry Li, vertical general manager of Tencent Smart Retail, detailed the push alongside enterprise partners at the 2026 World Retail Lab Asia event. The software line-up introduces five specialized tools for merchant operations: WorkBuddy for workforce productivity, CodeBuddy for software development, DataBuddy for enterprise data workspaces, Miora for automated creative design, and Ardot for turning design assets into code.

    Connecting Weixin to the shop floor

    The system links merchant back offices directly to front-line sales teams on WeCom and shoppers on Weixin. Rather than forcing store associates to toggle between stand-alone software suites, the setup feeds automated inventory updates, design files and customer prompts into Tencent’s messaging channels. That reduces friction for floor staff who already run client relationships through corporate chat accounts.

    Enterprise software vendors across Asia frequently stumble on floor-level adoption. Tencent is betting that tying generative design and analytics agents to the chat apps clerks already use daily will bypass the standard training hurdles.

    Jewellery chains and supply taggers

    Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group is using the infrastructure across customer management, store operations and jewellery design. The jewellery retail chain manages a database of nearly 60 million global loyalty members, who generate more than 95 per cent of its total sales volume. The group links unified customer insights to floor operations across its store network to track individual buying habits and stock preferences.

    Industrial supplier SML Group has embedded the software into its product development, market intelligence and supply management. The firm provides RFID tracking, retail identification and digital product solutions to roughly 600 consumer brands across global markets.

    Sinong Duan, vice president of strategy and transformation at SML Group, said: “Customer engagement is one of the areas where we see significant potential for AI. It can help businesses better understand customer needs and improve product recommendations, creating new opportunities to enhance both conversion and service experiences. We have also had the opportunity to work with Tencent WorkBuddy, and its flexibility, user experience and support capabilities have enabled our teams to explore AI adoption more effectively.”

    The platform battle against Alibaba

    The aggressive push into merchant operations pits Tencent directly against Alibaba Group’s cloud and DingTalk ecosystem across Greater China. While Alibaba dominates pure-play e-commerce marketplaces like Taobao and Tmall, Tencent controls private-domain traffic where brands cultivate direct shopper relationships through bespoke Mini Programs. Brand operators increasingly favor private-domain channels because customer acquisitions carry lower marketplace take-rates.

    For consumer brands, committing to proprietary cloud agents locks enterprise data deep inside Tencent’s walled garden. Shifting between competing cloud environments becomes punitive once product catalogs, customer service histories and design archives run on platform-specific models. Retailers gain rapid workflow speed today at the price of long-term software dependency tomorrow.

    Measuring actual returns on automation

    Chinese consumer spending has remained selective throughout the year, forcing retail executives to audit back-office overhead and technology spending closely. Multinationals and domestic retail giants, including Decathlon China, Estee Lauder Group and toy maker Pop Mart, have increasingly trimmed speculative software experiments in favor of tools that cut headcount costs or lift repeat store visits.

    Tencent began assembling its smart retail unit in 2018 to bridge social messaging with physical store sales counters. The group spent earlier iterations refining digital payment terminals and loyalty program Mini Programs for department stores and supermarket chains across tier-one Chinese cities. This latest enterprise suite represents the next operational tier: replacing manual design, coding and inventory forecasting with automated agents.

    Merchant adoption rates for tools such as Miora and Ardot over the upcoming Golden Week and Lunar New Year retail peaks will provide the first real test of whether generative design can shave measurable weeks off corporate fashion and merchandising cycles.

  • Huawei Sets 10 Gbps Microwave Backhaul Target to Support Mobile AI

    Huawei Sets 10 Gbps Microwave Backhaul Target to Support Mobile AI

    Huawei targeted a 10 Gbps capacity standard for microwave backhaul networks in Kuala Lumpur to handle an expected tenfold surge in mobile artificial intelligence traffic.

    The equipment maker projects AI tokens and autonomous agent connections will expand cellular data volumes five to ten times across regional carrier links over the next few years.

    Jason Wang, president of the Huawei Microwave Product Line, detailed the architecture during the 5th Global Microwave Industry Forum on October 14-15, 2026. Meeting that volume requires upgrading backbone links to 10 Gbps while pushing suburban transmission over traditional K-band frequencies from single-channel 1TR to dual-channel 2TR configurations, delivering up to 5 Gbps across distances reaching 10 kilometers. In metropolitan centers, 5G deployments on 100 MHz blocks of C-band spectrum require aggregation hubs that exceed tens of gigabits per second.

    Backup Links for Constant Fiber Cuts

    Physical cable vulnerabilities dictate the push toward dual-media redundancy. Telecommunications operators across Asia record thousands of fiber cuts each month from construction accidents, utility strikes, and weather disruptions. When multiple mobile base stations rely on a solitary severed optical line, entire districts lose coverage, causing instant commercial transaction drops and subscriber defection.

    Microwave transport bridges those physical breaks without requiring civil excavation permits. Pairing wireless links directly with terrestrial glass allows commercial traffic to switch paths immediately when a line fails. For enterprise campuses, ports, and automated logistics warehouses, Huawei is rolling out point-to-point and point-to-multipoint links using unlicensed spectrum, allowing private industrial networks to bypass carrier license auctions entirely.

    Operator Margins and Spectrum Economics

    Asian mobile operators run thin operational margins and cannot easily fund universal deep-fiber trenching across fractured archipelago geographies. Competitors like Ericsson and Nokia have long promoted hybrid fiber-wireless topologies across Southeast Asia, but Huawei remains the dominant volume supplier across developing regional corridors. Bypassing spectrum licensing fees on private industrial campuses gives enterprise clients a faster deployment timeline than public carrier fiber, cutting installation lead times from quarters to days.

    The friction sits in operating expenditure. Adding microwave backup preserves service uptime for mobile commerce and automated logistics hubs, yet managing dual transmission systems inflates routine maintenance budgets. Automation software must handle fault diagnosis, network tuning, and power management autonomously, or the personnel cost of supervising parallel networks will erase the operational savings.

    The Trajectory of High-Band Backhaul

    Regional carriers spent the past four years expanding 5G radio coverage across major metropolitan districts, initially routing suburban base stations through lower-capacity microwave dishes built for basic mobile internet. As autonomous driving pilots, telemedicine platforms, and mobile checkout systems scaled across Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, existing multi-hundred-megabit backhaul links reached saturation during peak commercial hours.

    Equipment vendors responded by shifting development toward integrated multi-band solutions that pair standard high-frequency dishes with automated beam-tracking algorithms. The rollout of 5G-Advanced services across East and Southeast Asia now makes those capacity upgrades mandatory for operators defending their enterprise service contracts.

    Parameters to Track Next

    Carrier uptake across Southeast Asia now hinges on how quickly regional spectrum regulators allocate contiguous high-frequency microwave bands for commercial backhaul. Operators must balance the capital expense of replacing legacy 1TR outdoor units against the recurring revenue generated by guaranteed low-latency service contracts. The pace at which carriers achieve complete 10 Gbps link readiness on core suburban corridors through 2027 will reveal whether commercial mobile AI traffic delivers genuine enterprise returns.

  • Ericsson Bets on AI Traffic and 550 Million 5G Users to Drive India Growth

    Ericsson Bets on AI Traffic and 550 Million 5G Users to Drive India Growth

    Ericsson expects artificial intelligence applications and rising monthly data traffic to fuel a second wave of network investment in India, where 5G subscribers reached 550 million by September 2026.

    Monthly data consumption across Indian networks has climbed to between 36 and 37 gigabytes per user, according to company figures presented at the India Mobile Congress in New Delhi.

    The Swedish telecom equipment vendor is seeking fresh revenue after the rapid initial rollout of fifth-generation mobile infrastructure cooled. India accounted for 12 percent of Ericsson’s regional business covering South East Asia, Oceania, and India in 2025, down from 20 percent in 2023 during the peak of initial carrier deployments.

    Network Capacity Over Pure Consumer Use Cases

    Indian operators deployed 5G across 99.9 percent of the country’s districts in less than four years, making it one of the fastest national buildouts globally. The buildout occurred primarily because carriers needed immediate spectrum efficiency and radio capacity rather than waiting for specialized consumer applications.

    Nitin Bansal, managing director for India and head of networks for South East Asia, Oceania, and India at Ericsson, noted that 5G currently reaches roughly one-third of the country’s population. He argued that shifting directly to 5G rather than expanding older 4G infrastructure provided the necessary capacity to handle escalating consumer usage.

    Direct monetization remains the chief challenge for telecom operators Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio. Both carriers spent heavily on spectrum auctions and radio deployments starting in late 2022 and are now pushing higher-margin services to improve average revenue per user.

    Fixed Wireless and Enterprise Slicing

    Fixed Wireless Access has become the fastest monetization channel for Indian network operators looking to bypass fixed-line broadband delays. Data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India showed 13.45 million 5G FWA subscribers active at the end of August 2026.

    Service differentiation is shifting toward premium enterprise and high-tier retail customers. Bharti Airtel introduced commercial 5G network slicing, carving out dedicated network resources to provide guaranteed speeds and lower latency to postpaid retail subscribers.

    For equipment vendors including Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung, these software-defined features generate recurring software licensing fees rather than purely hardware-driven revenue.

    Artificial Intelligence Shifts Network Requirements

    Emerging artificial intelligence workloads on mobile devices are changing baseline infrastructure demands across Asian markets. Generative AI tools and spatial computing applications require heavy uplink capacity and reduced latency, forcing operators to tune cell sites that were originally configured primarily for downlink video streaming.

    Ericsson expects carriers to reconfigure their 5G standalone cores to handle automated traffic management and machine-learning compute loads. Critical infrastructure monitoring and industrial automation in manufacturing hubs around Pune, Chennai, and Gujarat are also pulling private 5G deployments into commercial operation.

    Vendors face pressure to prove these upgrades deliver real cost savings. Indian telecom operators operate with some of the lowest tariffs in the world, leaving slim margins for speculative infrastructure spending without clear returns.

    Targeting One Billion Subscribers by 2030

    India launched commercial 5G services in October 2022 and has since become one of the two largest mobile data markets alongside China. The central government has set an official target of one billion 5G subscribers by 2030.

    Meeting that target requires converting roughly 450 million additional mobile users from legacy 4G and 2G connections over the next four years. That conversion will hinge on the availability of entry-level 5G smartphones priced below 8,000 rupees, alongside wider rural cell coverage where standalone economics remain tight.

  • Ericsson Beats Third-Quarter Core Profit Forecast at 10.1 Billion Crowns

    Ericsson Beats Third-Quarter Core Profit Forecast at 10.1 Billion Crowns

    Telecom gear maker Ericsson reported a third-quarter operating profit before amortisation and restructuring of 10.1 billion Swedish crowns on Thursday, beating market forecasts despite a year-on-year decline.

    The result exceeded the 7.87 billion crown mean analyst estimate provided by the company, even as core profit fell from 15.8 billion crowns a year earlier. Efficiency measures helped offset higher component costs.

    Margin Pressure From Memory Chips

    Organic sales climbed 7 per cent to 59.5 billion crowns, running ahead of expectations of 55.4 billion crowns. Adjusted EBITA margin fell to 17.0 per cent from 28.1 per cent a year earlier, though it cleared the 14.2 per cent analyst consensus.

    Chief executive Per Narvinger cautioned that rising component expenses will continue to squeeze profitability across upcoming reporting periods. “Looking ahead, the RAN (Radio Access Network) market is flat, geopolitical uncertainty remains elevated and component costs are a headwind to gross margin,” he said in a statement.

    Shifting Demand in Regional Networks

    Equipment suppliers face a split market as carrier spending diverges sharply by territory. North American business delivered a slight sales increase during the quarter, aided by the scheduled timing of customer network deployments.

    For network operators across regional markets, stagnant radio access investments limit near-term contract expansion. Rising server and memory prices divert capital expenditure into data centre capacity, leaving traditional cellular hardware vendors to protect margins through overhead reductions rather than volume growth.

    Supply Chain Spillover From Artificial Intelligence

    Surging procurement of high-bandwidth memory for artificial intelligence clusters has tightened semiconductor supplies across the broader electronics supply chain. Telecommunications hardware makers must now absorb these elevated silicon costs or attempt to pass them to network carriers that are already restricting infrastructure budgets.

    Hardware suppliers that delayed long-term component pricing contracts face immediate gross margin compression. With mobile service revenue growing slowly, telecom operators are resisting equipment price increases, shifting the financial burden back onto equipment manufacturers.

    Tracking Recent Financial Steps

    The latest quarterly update follows a warning delivered three months earlier. Ericsson cautioned in July that escalating memory chip costs tied to intense artificial intelligence demand would exert sustained pressure on hardware manufacturing margins.

    Investors and supply chain planners are now monitoring fourth-quarter inventory valuations and component purchase commitments to gauge the full margin impact entering next year.

  • Google Defends US$15 Billion Indian AI Data Hub Against Community Scrutiny

    Google Defends US$15 Billion Indian AI Data Hub Against Community Scrutiny

    Google is pushing forward with a US$15 billion artificial intelligence data centre hub in Visakhapatnam despite community protests over power grids and water supplies in southern India.

    The gigawatt-scale development represents the search giant’s largest AI infrastructure project outside the United States and is scheduled to enter service in 2028.

    Local groups and environmental activists in Andhra Pradesh have called for a blanket moratorium on data centre construction across the state until authorities assess collective ecological impacts. The development footprint spans construction sites at Tarluvada village and Rambilli in the Anakapalli district, placing heavy computing loads in an area already experiencing water stress.

    Air Cooling Replaces Freshwater Systems

    Google altered its baseline engineering for the campus after pre-development studies identified acute pressure on the surrounding watershed. The facility will rely on advanced air cooling instead of evaporative water cooling towers to chill server racks, avoiding the millions of litres of daily freshwater extraction typical of large-scale server farms.

    Facility maintenance and non-cooling operations will still draw municipal water. The company has pledged to replenish 120 per cent of the volume consumed by non-cooling facility needs across its operational footprint by 2030.

    Grid capacity presents a parallel bottleneck. While Google declines to publish site-level electricity numbers, company executives state that the group pays for all necessary grid substation and transmission upgrades upfront while funding local renewable energy projects above statutory quotas.

    Subsea Cabling and Regional Edge Networks

    Visakhapatnam offers direct coastal access for international subsea fibre connections linking India to landing stations in Australia and South Africa. That routing establishes Andhra Pradesh as India’s third core subsea landing hub alongside Mumbai and Chennai, giving enterprise networks faster bandwidth to Southeast Asia and Indian Ocean routes.

    Hyperscale cloud operators across the Asia-Pacific region face rising friction over energy allocations. Authorities in mature data hub markets like Singapore have enforced strict sustainability caps, while Finnish regulators recently suspended construction on two Google sites pending mandatory environmental assessments. Digital platforms rolling out enterprise AI models across Asia must now compete directly with residential populations and manufacturing zones for grid access.

    For enterprise software vendors, regional retailers and cloud customers, infrastructure constraints in primary metros make secondary coastal hubs essential. Yet when global operators cluster in emerging tier-two corridors, they import the same resource disputes that delayed builds in Western Europe and Southeast Asia. The financial exposure rests with regional governments that offer tax concessions before local utilities can guarantee steady baseload power.

    Economic Payoffs and Local Employment

    Data centre developments generate large short-term construction payrolls but run with lean permanent staff once servers go live. Google estimates the Visakhapatnam hub will support approximately 4,200 construction workers annually across a three-to-five-year build cycle.

    Company projections place the recurring economic contribution at US$688 million each year through supply chain activity, facility services and maintenance contracts. Alexander Smith, Google’s head of infrastructure and energy for the Asia-Pacific region, defended the long-term community footprint during project reviews.

    “For every job inside a Google data centre we support nine additional jobs in the surrounding community,” Smith said.

    Andhra Pradesh state planning officials must now review activist petitions demanding an environmental audit before granting additional clearances for companion tech facilities scheduled for the same coastal corridor.

  • Telcos Struggle to Scale AI as Only 13 per Cent Reach Production

    Telcos Struggle to Scale AI as Only 13 per Cent Reach Production

    Communications service providers have deployed artificial intelligence across dozens of operational trials, but only 13 per cent of operators have successfully scaled those deployments into full production environments.

    The deployment bottleneck persists even though nearly 75 per cent of companies report positive results during initial pilot phases, exposing structural friction inside legacy telecom IT stacks.

    Industry consortium TM Forum and regional operators will address the operational divide on November 5 during a joint technical briefing on autonomous network infrastructure and agentic customer experience. The session brings together Joann O’Brien, vice president of composable IT and ecosystems at TM Forum, alongside Seetha Gurunathan, global head of strategy and transformation at Vodafone, Shekhar Kulkarni, chief IT architect at Deutsche Telekom, and Seshan Krishnamurthi, vice president for Africa and Central Europe at Covalense Digital.

    The Bottleneck in Monolithic Billing Systems

    Legacy business support systems remain the central roadblock for carrier monetization. Traditional billing architectures were engineered for static monthly invoicing rather than real-time micro-transactions, non-terrestrial satellite network access, or dynamic algorithmic pricing.

    When carriers attempt to bolt generative or agentic intelligence onto these rigid systems, integration costs surge and transaction speeds falter. The industry push now centers on replacing monolithic enterprise software with modular, cloud-native components communicating through standardized application programming interfaces.

    Moving from Reactive Chatbots to Agentic Systems

    Customer service operations represent the initial testing ground for carrier autonomy. Early deployments relied on basic script-based chatbots that answered recurring billing queries, but network operators are now testing autonomous software agents capable of executing account modifications and diagnosing network faults without human intervention.

    Giving software agents execution authority introduces operational liabilities. Carriers must balance automated problem resolution against transactional accuracy, data compliance, and consumer trust across diverse regulatory jurisdictions.

    Standardizing Open Architecture Across Vendors

    Multi-vendor integration requires common software standards across global supply chains. TM Forum is pushing its Open Digital Architecture framework to establish interoperable, plug-and-play IT components that prevent telecom operators from locking themselves into single-vendor software suites.

    Standardized interfaces allow operators to deploy machine-learning models from independent software vendors directly into existing network workflows. Without open architecture standards, every software upgrade requires bespoke systems integration that slows time-to-market.

    Measuring Returns on AI Capital Expenditures

    Telecom operators face mounting investor pressure to justify heavy capital allocations to digital transformation projects. Evaluating returns requires a metrics framework that tracks real operational expenditure cuts, customer churn rates, and service provisioning speeds alongside headline revenue gains.

    Network operators will test whether these modular architectures can deliver measurable financial returns when the industry reviews production deployments in the upcoming operational cycle.

  • StarHub Buys MyRepublic Mobile Business to Deepen Network Control

    StarHub Buys MyRepublic Mobile Business to Deepen Network Control

    StarHub agreed to acquire the mobile business of MyRepublic on Oct 8, taking full ownership of the virtual operator across Singapore.

    The transaction gives the carrier complete control of MyRepublic’s subscriber base after buying its broadband operations in August 2026.

    Under the agreement, MyRepublic Mobile will continue operating as a standalone consumer brand without job cuts. Its 4G customer base, which previously ran on M1’s infrastructure, is transferring to StarHub’s network. Existing subscribers will stay on their current tariffs and contracts without service interruption.

    Network migration and brand continuity

    Buying the mobile arm resolves the split ownership created when StarHub took over MyRepublic’s fixed-line broadband unit two months earlier. The carrier is absorbing traffic onto its proprietary radio access network, cutting external wholesale wholesale fees and consolidating customer accounts under one roof.

    For consumer retail, the multi-brand strategy keeps budget-conscious shoppers from defecting to rivals. StarHub runs its primary postpaid brand alongside lower-cost alternatives, including its digital budget service eight, which took over subscribers from MVNO redOne earlier this year.

    Margin squeeze across city-state carriers

    Singapore’s mobile market remains one of the most price-competitive in Southeast Asia, squeezing operating margins across all network operators. StarHub reported a 10.5 percent drop in mobile service revenue to $245.3 million for the first half ended June 30, down from $274.1 million a year earlier.

    Profitability took a sharper hit. StarHub’s underlying net profit, excluding its cybersecurity unit Ensign, fell 76.1 percent to $12.4 million from $51.9 million, based on calculations by CGS International analyst Prem Jearajasingam. Incumbent rival Singtel recorded a 3.1 percent dip in Singapore first-quarter operating revenue to $901 million, pointing to heavy discounting across mobile plans.

    Virtual operators face consolidation pressure

    Independent mobile virtual network operators lack the balance sheets needed to fund infrastructure upgrades and fifth-generation wireless rollouts. Without physical cell sites, these resellers rely on wholesale capacity agreements that leave little room for profit during sustained price wars.

    Large carriers are using acquisitions to strip out duplicated overhead and direct cash flow into central network hardware. Defending capital expenditure requires larger subscriber pools, pushing small resellers to exit independence or fold into network owners.

    Next steps in carrier realignment

    The MyRepublic absorption forms part of a broader contraction among Singapore telcos. In September, StarHub and Keppel confirmed ongoing discussions regarding a potential transaction involving mobile network operator M1.

    “With ongoing consolidation, we are bringing greater scale to invest more effectively in the networks, resilience and innovation that Singapore will increasingly depend on,” said Nikhil Eapen, chief executive officer at StarHub.

    Regulators and investors are now monitoring the progress of talks between StarHub and Keppel over M1, where a formal structure or definitive agreement is expected in upcoming corporate filings.

  • SoftBank Restores Mobile Coverage Across 5Km Radius from 3,000 Metres

    SoftBank Restores Mobile Coverage Across 5Km Radius from 3,000 Metres

    SoftBank Corp. Announced this week the successful completion of a trial providing mobile communication capability from the air to establish temporary ground coverage during large-scale disasters.

    The trial utilized a domestically designed and manufactured Disaster Relief Unit Pod mounted on a large remotely piloted aircraft system operated by the Japan Coast Guard, conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications.

    Airborne Cells Over Disaster Zones

    Transmitting radio waves from an altitude of 3,000 meters, the aircraft established a mobile communication area with a radius of over 5 km, delivering outdoor download speeds of up to 20 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 5 Mbps on 5 MHz bandwidth.

    Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications conducted the test alongside the Coast Guard in an inter-ministerial partnership. State backing reflects urgent policy pressure to harden communication networks against catastrophic seismic events along the Nankai Trough.

    Commercial Stakes for Asian Operators

    Regional carriers across Asia-Pacific face heavy costs from climate-driven network outages, yet few have solved wide-area restoration beyond truck-mounted base stations that stall at flooded or blocked roads. Telcos in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan have tested tethered drones and satellite-to-cell protocols. Short battery endurance and low data throughput limit those tools. SoftBank’s use of a long-endurance maritime surveillance drone bridges the gap between low-capacity orbital links and localized field generators.

    Fleet costs for dedicated aircraft remain steep. Telecom operators cannot justify buying military-grade drones solely for disaster standby. Shared-asset pacts with coast guards and civil defense agencies offer the only workable operating model. SoftBank is positioning its communications pod as a plug-and-play government utility rather than a standalone carrier capital expenditure.

    From Coastal Helicopters to Fixed-Wing Drones

    Testing builds on a phased development program. SoftBank ran initial flights in March 2026 by mounting the DRU Pod on a conventional helicopter over Kuroshio Town in Kochi Prefecture. Those trials proved signal transmission geometry. Engineers then adapted the housing for high-altitude, long-endurance fixed-wing drones capable of staying airborne for dozens of hours.

    Funding stems from a research contract titled Development of Aerial Mobile Network Systems for Rapid Coverage Restoration in Disaster-Affected Areas, awarded to SoftBank in 2023 under the Beyond 5G and 6G Fund Program run by Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.

    Next Steps in Fleet Integration

    SoftBank will now refine pod aerodynamics and automate spectrum handoffs between aerial platforms and surviving ground towers. Field teams plan to test autonomous deployment routines to cut launch preparation times following emergency alerts. Regulators and emergency planners will evaluate standardized operational protocols for the system ahead of commercial rollout targets for coastal disaster response units.

  • Microsoft Secures Approval for $902M Western Sydney Data Centre

    Microsoft Secures Approval for $902M Western Sydney Data Centre

    Microsoft won New South Wales government approval for an A$1.3 billion ($901.9 million) data centre in western Sydney on 1 October. The five-storey facility in Huntingwood will deliver 96 megawatts of IT capacity across 40 data halls.

    State planners signed off on the project three days after Goodman Group abandoned plans for an A$798 million facility on Sydney’s north shore following neighborhood protests. Industrial corridors and suburban fringes continue to drift apart as cloud infrastructure expands across Australia.

    Power Caps and Grid Conditions

    The development consent caps total power consumption at 140 megawatts. Before operations begin, state authorities require Microsoft to match all electricity demand with additional, firmed renewable supply. This power must come through power purchase agreements for generation within New South Wales.

    First-year carbon dioxide equivalent emissions are projected at 1,326 kilotonnes, driven largely by operational electricity draw. Onsite backup systems include 46 diesel generators holding up to 1.5 million litres of fuel, alongside 158,763 kilograms of lithium-ion batteries. Cooling will rely on 36 rooftop evaporative cooling towers drawing approximately 3.9 megalitres of water daily.

    Federal Biodiversity Clearance

    Planning consent gives Microsoft no immediate path to break ground. The company must still secure federal environmental sign-off under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

    Clearing the site requires removing 0.33 hectares of a conservation area containing critically endangered woodland and potential wildlife habitats. Construction will take 24 months once federal approvals land. It will generate 250 construction jobs and 74 permanent operational positions.

    Site Selection Shifts West

    Securing the Huntingwood site required extensive negotiations with Blacktown City Council over building bulk, drainage, and landscaping before reaching a formal planning agreement in September 2025. The proposal attracted only a single public objection. Residential properties sit 90 metres away.

    Goodman faced a harsher reception at its proposed Project Mars site in Lane Cove West. Homes stood 20 metres away, with a primary school within 160 metres. That proposal drew 374 public submissions, with only nine in support, before Goodman withdrew it on 28 September.

    The policy environment for large data centres had evolved significantly since planning started, Goodman head of planning Guy Smith told the planning department.

    Hyperscalers and real estate developers in Sydney are concentrating capital in western industrial clusters to avoid urban friction. Huntingwood borders Eastern Creek, where Goodman has filed plans for a 500-megawatt, A$5 billion campus. Nearby in Minchinbury, Starwood, Doma, and Telstra InfraCo are building a 62-megawatt facility.

    National Standards on the Horizon

    Engineering consultancy Lehr Consultants International lodged Microsoft’s initial application in 2023 without naming the end user. The project ties into Microsoft’s October 2023 commitment to invest A$5 billion over two years to expand Australian cloud and computing infrastructure.

    State planners also approved Stockland’s A$630.4 million Road 1 Data Centre in Macquarie Park on the same day, permitting a 34.3-megawatt IT load alongside future residential towers. Developers now face tighter rules. Victoria is proposing mandatory 150-metre buffer zones from homes, while the Australian federal government prepares national data centre legislation for introduction in early 2027.

  • DNB Secures $1.27 Billion Islamic Facility for Malaysia 5G Network

    DNB Secures $1.27 Billion Islamic Facility for Malaysia 5G Network

    Digital Nasional Berhad secured MYR 5.2 billion ($1.27 billion) in syndicated Islamic term financing. The facility funds the next stage of Malaysia’s national 5G deployment.

    The package refinances an existing Government Guarantee Revolving Credit Facility that expired on September 29, 2026. This shifts the wholesale operator away from direct sovereign debt backing.

    Refinancing state debt

    Maybank Investment Bank led the syndicate as mandated lead arranger, bookrunner, and coordinator. Joint mandated lead arrangers were AmInvestment Bank, CIMB Islamic Bank, RHB Islamic Bank, and United Overseas Bank (Malaysia). AmInvestment Bank also served as financial adviser to DNB.

    This long-term package ranks among the largest syndicated debt deals arranged for an unlisted Malaysian business. It provides independent capital to maintain infrastructure operations as the country prepares to licence a competing second 5G wholesale network.

    Ownership changes among carriers

    Proceeds prepare the ground for the Ministry of Finance Incorporated to surrender its ordinary equity. MOF Inc. Holds a 31.18 percent stake in DNB and plans to exit early in the fourth quarter of 2026. It will keep a special share to retain veto power over strategic national decisions.

    Three commercial mobile network operators, CelcomDigi, Maxis, and YTL Communications, each hold 22.94 percent stakes after injecting MYR 202 million ($49.45 million) apiece in May. Once the finance ministry transfers its ordinary holding, those three carriers will become equal shareholders in the business.

    Commercial impact and competitive risk

    For enterprise customers and mobile subscribers, private ownership removes the risk of sudden policy reversals tied to government budgets. Joint control forces the three competing retail operators to fund capital expenditure directly rather than rely on state guarantees.

    Commercial risk now shifts to network economics under Malaysia’s planned dual-network structure. When the telecommunications regulator awards the second 5G network, DNB must defend its wholesale traffic volumes against a rival system. The debt facility secures critical operating runway for that contest.

    Spectrum boost and network specs

    DNB expanded its active spectrum assets alongside the financing deal. The carrier activated an extra 100 MHz in the 3.3 GHz to 3.4 GHz band. Paired with its original 3.4 GHz to 3.5 GHz assignment, it now has 200 MHz of contiguous mid-band spectrum.

    All 240 MHz of DNB’s spectrum holdings converted into formal spectrum assignments on October 1, 2026, following approval from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission. The operator will direct the additional capacity into Massive MIMO, carrier aggregation, 5G-Advanced, and automated traffic management across metropolitan nodes.

    What happens next

    Next up is the formal completion of MOF Inc.’s equity exit before the end of the fourth quarter of 2026. Attention will then turn to how CelcomDigi, Maxis, and YTL Communications balance their board representation and whether any of the three seek access to Malaysia’s second 5G consortium.

  • Qualcomm to Pay Huawei in Multi-Year 5G and Artificial Intelligence Patent Agreement

    Qualcomm to Pay Huawei in Multi-Year 5G and Artificial Intelligence Patent Agreement

    Qualcomm has agreed to pay Huawei Technologies for access to its patents in a multi-year cross-licensing deal covering 5G, computing, and artificial intelligence, the Shenzhen company announced on Monday.

    The agreement makes the San Diego chipmaker a net payer to Huawei for the first time, pushing Huawei’s cumulative intellectual property licensing contract value past $6.9 billion.

    Under the terms of the transaction, Qualcomm will license Huawei’s portfolio and buy specific US patents held by the Chinese group across computing, artificial intelligence, and networking hardware. The deal does not include broader commercial tie-ups or component sales, and both companies must clear regulatory reviews in the United States before closing the asset transfers.

    Reversing the Flow of Licensing Cash

    The financial turnaround marks a sharp shift in the mobile supply chain. Huawei paid Qualcomm for patent access as early as 2001, and paid $1.8 billion in back licensing fees to settle an intellectual property dispute with the US group in 2020. Now the balance of standard-essential communications patents and edge computing IP has forced Qualcomm to write checks back to its Chinese competitor.

    For device makers across Asia, the agreement sets a pricing precedent. Hardware brands that design around Qualcomm chipsets have watched royalty rates climb as 5G and on-device AI architectures mature. A formal licensing pact between the two dominant patent holders removes immediate litigation risks for smartphone assemblers, while confirming that access to Chinese cellular and machine-learning IP will carry direct cash costs.

    Expanding Patent Monetisation Beyond China

    Huawei has spent the past five years building a high-margin licensing arm to recoup capital spent on domestic research and development. The business turned net positive on revenue in 2021 after US export restrictions curtailed Huawei’s handset shipments and blocked its access to American semiconductor fabrication tools.

    That monetization drive has yielded more than 260 patent agreements with global tech firms, including Nokia, Samsung, and Amazon, alongside domestic phone brands Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi. Huawei signed a similar multi-year cross-licensing agreement with US personal computer maker HP in August, covering foundational Wi-Fi technologies after resolving earlier disputes.

    The Long Legal Road from 2011

    Huawei collected its first external patent royalty payment in 2011 from Motorola. Over the subsequent decade and a half, the company poured capital into 3GPP wireless standards, optical transmission, and proprietary compute silicon, accumulating extensive patent portfolios in Europe, the US, and mainland China.

    US authorities continue to scrutinize cross-border technology transfers, creating friction for any transaction involving Chinese hardware intellectual property. The current agreement remains subject to Washington’s regulatory clearance, which will test whether standard-essential patent sales and cross-licensing can proceed amid ongoing federal export controls and pending legal trials.

  • Beeline Kazakhstan Launches Starlink Direct-to-Cell Service for 11.8 Million Users

    Beeline Kazakhstan Launches Starlink Direct-to-Cell Service for 11.8 Million Users

    Beeline Kazakhstan rolled out commercial satellite-to-mobile connectivity with Starlink on October 5. The launch gives its 11.8 million subscribers messaging access in dead zones without specialized equipment.

    The service connects standard, compatible smartphones directly to low-Earth-orbit satellites. Coverage spans Kazakhstan’s 2.7 million square kilometers of territory.

    How Direct-to-Cell Connectivity Operates

    Standard smartphones link straight to Starlink satellites once users travel beyond terrestrial base station reach. Customers need no external antennas, satellite handsets, or add-ons to connect.

    Subscribers activate and manage the feature through Janymda, Beeline Kazakhstan’s consumer application. It works via line-of-sight satellite links across remote highways, steppe corridors, and mountainous terrain where ground networks are absent or disabled by adverse weather.

    Messaging and selected app access are free of charge during an initial commercial promotional window.

    Network Economics and Rural Coverage Shifts

    Building terrestrial towers across sparsely populated land carries high capital costs and low average revenue yields. By routing rural dead-zone traffic through satellite links, mobile operators avoid laying fiber and powering standalone remote base stations in harsh climates.

    Logistics fleets and consumer tech users on Central Asian trade routes gain failover protection without buying satellite handsets. The service also secures an emergency fallback during network outages caused by natural disasters.

    Hardware Limits and Handset Compatibility

    Bandwidth limits keep this initial phase confined to text messaging and select data-light applications. Voice and high-speed data transmission depend on future satellite payload upgrades and device radio capabilities.

    Indoor reception remains zero without open sky. Handset users inside dense urban canyons or thick indoor structures will receive no satellite signal without a clear line of sight.

    Agreements and Development Timeline

    Official talks during President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s visit to the United States in 2025 set up the rollout. Following that trip, Beeline Kazakhstan and the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development signed a formal cooperation memorandum with Starlink in November 2025.

    Technical trials began in December 2025 to verify direct handoffs between satellite transceivers and standard consumer chipsets across rural regions. Kazakhstan became the first Central Asian nation to transition the technology from testing to live consumer service.

    Jabbor Kayumov, CEO of Beeline Kazakhstan, said: “This was a real team effort and close collaboration with the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development and with Starlink Mobile to get the technology right for our market. We’re proud to be the first operator in Kazakhstan to bring Starlink Mobile to market, helping people stay connected when it matters most.”

    Next Steps for Regional Rollout

    Parent group VEON operates mobile networks across five countries covering a total base of 150 million connectivity subscribers and 228 million digital users. The carrier tracks network performance in Kazakhstan before evaluating rollouts across its other Central and South Asian operating units.

    Beeline Kazakhstan will review customer uptake figures and data usage patterns on the Janymda platform before setting commercial tariff pricing at the close of the promotional term.