Telefonica Germany adds RedCap to 5G Plus Pack, forms AI partnership with Capgemini
GERMANY 19 DEC

Telefonica Germany adds RedCap to 5G Plus Pack, forms AI partnership with Capgemini

Telefonica Germany is offering RedCap in combination with its 5G Plus Pack until December next year. Customers can add RedCap free of charge to existing mobile contracts and benefit for an unlimited amount of time if they book the option between 17 December 2025 and 15 December 2026. Users can activate the 5G Plus Pack including RedCap for all 5G Plus-enabled O2 mobile plans on the Mein O2 app, on the Mein O2 customer portal under "Bookable Data Options", by calling the service hotline or in O2 shops.

Dubber lures tier-1 North American contract for AI-enabled mobile voice recordings
NORTH AMERICA 19 DEC

Dubber lures tier-1 North American contract for AI-enabled mobile voice recordings

Australia-based Dubber, provider of enterprise-grade call recording technology, has secured a contract with an unnamed North American telco to supply mobile voice recording and AI-based conversation analytics. The deal will initially run for five years, and Dubber expects to receive an initial payment worth around AUD 4.6 million (USD 3.1 million) by end-Q3 2026. This initial sum includes a licence for the Dubber Cloud Recorder platform, as well as on-going maintenance and support services for the initial f

UK's AI Security Institute publishes Frontier AI Trends Report
UNITED KINGDOM 19 DEC

UK's AI Security Institute publishes Frontier AI Trends Report

The UK's AI Security Institute has published its inaugural Frontier AI Trends Report, outlining the capabilities of the most advanced AI systems. The report shows that safeguards are improving, with the Institute working with AI companies to strengthen protections and keep people safe. The time taken for Institute red-teamers to find a general way of bypassing an AI model's safety rules (universal jailbreak) has jumped from minutes to several hours between model generations, an around 40-fold improvement.

ZainTech and Vortex tie up to advance video compression and AI visual intelligence
MIDDLE EAST 19 DEC

ZainTech and Vortex tie up to advance video compression and AI visual intelligence

ZainTech has announced a partnership with Vortex Global, a software company specialising in surveillance and visual intelligence products, to apply AI-powered analytics and efficient compression to enterprise video data services. ZainTech will integrate Vortex's 'Z Compress' and 'Twin Vision' products. Z Compress was developed by Secure City Solutions (SCS) and is a high-performance video compression technology that lowers bandwidth and storage needs without sacrificing codecs, frame rates or video quality.

Samsung introduces memory module for AI data centres
GLOBAL 19 DEC

Samsung introduces memory module for AI data centres

Samsung has announced the availability of customer samples of SOCAMM2, a new LPDDR-based server memory module designed for AI data centre workloads, as the industry shifts from large-scale model training towards continuous inference. The company said SOCAMM2, short for Small Outline Compression Attached Memory Module, is based on LPDDR5X DRAM and is intended to complement existing DDR-based server memory such as RDIMM in AI-accelerated systems.

Cloudflare picks 2025 internet trends as Google, Facebook top traffic rankings
GLOBAL 18 DEC

Cloudflare picks 2025 internet trends as Google, Facebook top traffic rankings

Cloudflare has published its annual roundup of key internet trends and its ranking of high-traffic web services. In the trends report, it picked out accelerated AI web crawling activity as an indicator of competition between major tech firms, including search providers and generative AI platforms, with Google's crawling bot leading competitors as the single biggest source of automated internet traffic. 

Cassava and Gebeya launch AI-powered creator platform
AFRICA 18 DEC

Cassava and Gebeya launch AI-powered creator platform

Cassava Technologies and Gebeya are launch Gebeya Dala, a suite of AI tools to enable Africans to create digital content using Cassava's data centres and GPU infrastructure. Gebeya Dala is designed for users without technical expertise. Its initial modules include an AI-powered app builder to create functional applications without coding experience and using instructions in their local language, as well as a service to create comics and manga from Africa's oral traditions and stories without prior artistic

Qualcomm closes Alphawave IP acquisition
GLOBAL 18 DEC

Qualcomm closes Alphawave IP acquisition

Qualcomm has completed its USD 2.4 billion acquisition of Alphawave IP Group. The deal closing is earlier than expected, coming roughly one fiscal quarter ahead of the envisaged timeframe. Alphawave IP's connectivity and custom silicon chipsets are anticipated to support Qualcomm's expansion in the data centre market, with Tony Plias, Alphawave's CEO and co-founder, onboarded to lead Qualcomm's push into the data centre space.

Microsoft, Iberdrola ink Spanish energy and AI deal
SPAIN 18 DEC

Microsoft, Iberdrola ink Spanish energy and AI deal

Microsoft has signed two new power purchase agreements (PPAs) with Spanish energy giant Iberdrola totalling 150 MW of electricity from the latter's Iglesias wind farm in Burgos and El Escudo wind farm in Cantabria. The new deals add to three PPAs already signed between Microsoft and Iberdrola's US subsidiary Avangrid covering solar and wind projects in Ohio, California and Washington, bringing the total contracted renewables capacity to around 500 MW.

Fortinet rolls up Arista hardware into expanded Secure AI Data Center framework
GLOBAL 18 DEC

Fortinet rolls up Arista hardware into expanded Secure AI Data Center framework

Fortinet has announced an expanded iteration of its end-to-end firewall and security framework for AI-targeted data centre networks. The upgraded Fortinet Secure AI Data Center is rolling out in collaboration with its partner Arista Networks. The joint solution combines Arista's software-driven data centre switches and routers with Fortinet's AISC-based network firewalls and a raft of advanced security features, including AI-aware threat protection and encrypted traffic inspection.

Rostelecom's Wink tests AI agent for choosing films
RUSSIAN FEDERATION 18 DEC

Rostelecom's Wink tests AI agent for choosing films

Russian national operator Rostelecom and its online video service Wink have developed a smart assistant to help people choose what to watch. The beta-testing of the Entertainment Agent has started, with the AI-based service integrated into the Wink platform and applications. The service is fully based on technologies and IT infrastructure from Rostelecom, the companies noted.

Rakuten unveils high-performance Japanese AI model
JAPAN 18 DEC

Rakuten unveils high-performance Japanese AI model

Rakuten Group unveiled its latest AI model, Rakuten AI 3.0, a Japanese large language model (LLM) developed as part of the Generative AI Accelerator Challenge (GENIAC) project promoted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). The new model is based on a Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture and is now available for use across Rakuten services through the Rakuten AI Gateway, Rakuten's internal platform offering a suite

JAPAN 18 DEC

Kyocera completes private 5G and AI test for wildlife monitoring

Kyocera Mirai Envision has completed an end-to-end connectivity verification linking a private 5G network with an AI-based wildlife monitoring system designed to detect bears, following a joint trial with two technology partners. The test, partnered with with Eyemovic and Core-Support, validated the transmission of live video from IP cameras over a private 5G network to Eyemovic's bear detection service, known as Kumamiru AI. The trial confirmed that bear detection, analysis and alert notifications function

MALAYSIA 18 DEC

Axiata achieves living wage milestone, offers AI training for employees

Axiata has announced that all its permanent employees in Malaysia earn above the Living Wage threshold of MYR 3,100 per month, reinforcing the Group's commitment to the Ministry of Finance's Living Wage initiative under the Ekonomi Madani framework. Axiata also reports it provides its workforce with AI upskilling. Under the Axiata.AI framework, a group-wide initiative to embed AI capabilities across operations and talent development, employees can access Generative AI and machine learning courses.

ASIA 18 DEC

NTT Data chosen as APJ launch partner for Snowflake Intelligence

NTT Data has been selected as the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) launch partner for Snowflake Intelligence, an AI data agent service for businesses that analyses corporate data across regions using natural language and provides instant insights. Since signing a partnership agreement with Snowflake in 2020, NTT Data has developed a variety of unique services and provided a Snowflake-based data platform to customers across a wide range of industries.

POLAND 17 DEC

Orange Poland launches new smart city platform for traffic data

Orange Poland has introduced its new solution Smart Road – Liczbox. The smart city system developed in cooperation with the company AISP is based on the small computer Liczbox, with installed AI. The computer can be integrated with a video-surveillance camera to analyse road traffic, recognising pedestrians, cyclists, motorcycles, cars, buses, lorries as well as other objects. The data from camera is processed and transferred to the IoT platform Orange Live Objects, where it can analysed in reports and visu

UNITED KINGDOM 17 DEC

UK public, creative sectors reject govt AI copyright plans

The UK government has received more than 11,500 responses to its consultation on copyright and AI. The consultation set out three objectives for reforms of UK copyright law to support AI training. These were Access, allowing AI developers to access and use large volumes of online content to train models without infringing copyright; Control, giving rights holders control over their content, allowing them to license and secure payment for its use by AI models; and Transparency, with more transparency about w

CANADA 16 DEC

Canadian govt launches new scheme to boost quantum technology ecosystem

The Canadian government has launched Phase 1 of the Canadian Quantum Champions Program (CQCP), supported by a CAD 92 million investment, to strengthen the country's quantum ecosystem and retain talent. This is part of a 5-year, CAD 334.3 million investment announced in the Budget 2025 to boost the quantum technology ecosystem in Canada.

IRELAND 16 DEC

Core42 sets up new European headquarters in Dublin

Core42, UAE-based AI infrastructure provider, is establishing a new European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. The new office will operate as a central base for regional operations, including customer delivery, ecosystem partnerships, regulatory engagement and engineering. It will allow the company to co-operate more closely with institutions and industry leaders in Europe as demand for scalable AI infrastructure increases.

UNITED KINGDOM 16 DEC

US govt suspends 'tech prosperity deal' with UK

The US government has suspended the 'tech prosperity deal' with the UK as it looks to secure improved terms for wider trade, writes UK newspaper 'The Telegraph'. The tech agreement was announced during President Trump's state visit to the UK in September, and included investment commitments worth GBP 31 billion from major US tech companies. 

UNITED KINGDOM 16 DEC

UK govt launches new Women in Tech taskforce

The UK government has announced the launch of the new 'Women in Tech' taskforce to support more women to enter and lead in the UK technology sector. The launch comes as research shows that the UK economy loses GBP 2-3.5 billion a year from women leaving the tech sector or changing jobs due to barriers holding them back. The taskforce aims to break down these barriers, unlock the full talent pool and boost economic growth.

LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN 16 DEC

Open Labs debuts AI framework for telecom operations in LatAm

Open Labs, part of the Altice Labs Group, has announced the launch of Nossis Genius in Latin America, an artificial intelligence framework designed to modernise and automate telecommunications operations. The platform, developed within the company's Nossis One suite, integrates generative AI, predictive analytics and continuous learning to create a modular ecosystem that enhances operational autonomy across multiple network domains.

ITALY 16 DEC

AI use by Italian firms doubles in 2025 but dominated by larger companies - study

Over half (53.1%) of Italian companies with at least 250 employees are now using artificial intelligence tools, up from 32.5 percent in 2024, according to a report from national data agency Istat. However, the proportion plummets to 16.4 percent when taking into account all firms with at least 10 employees, up from 8.2 percent in 2024 and 5.0 percent in 2023.

QATAR 16 DEC

Ooredoo Qatar teams up with Rafay Systems to ease access to AI tools

Ooredoo Qatar announced a partnership with Rafay Systems to deliver an enterprise-grade, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) powered by Nvidia accelerated computing to organisations across the country, building on its recent deployment of Nvidia AI infrastructure in Qatar. The collaboration enables enterprises to build, train and deploy AI and GenAI applications faster and more securely, within Qatar's sovereign AI cloud.

Just In

13:39

True reshuffles executive team

19 DEC 16:42

SLT-Mobitel launches 5G network in Sri Lanka

19 DEC 16:19

Dialog Axiata launches 5G network, connects 1.5 million subscribers

19 DEC 15:56

UK govt to ban AI-enabled nudification apps to protect women, girls

Commentary

13:56

Video market set for slower growth ahead

11:38

Netflix buys Warner Bros to deepen content catalogue

11:11

KPN's mixed performance in Q3 raises questions for strategy day

15:26

Stock markets breaking records but what happened to Odido's IPO plans?

Background

01:04

The week in telecom: Wi-Fi bolt-ons take off to boost broadband growth, video market works on consolidation

01:39

The week in telecom: Netflix wins bidding for Warner Bros, Apple poaches new execs, Samsung debuts trifold

13:51

Proximus vs. Telenet: Proximus performs better in Q3 while Telenet uses up cash

14:16

Proximus Domestic still struggling with low margins