5G

Mar 25, 2024

Nigeria: Africa’s Mobile Giant

Nigeria is home to Africa’s biggest mobile market by some distance, with 217.5 million subscriptions at the end of 2023, up from 209.5 million a year earlier.

The next largest African markets at end-2023 were South Africa with 118.9 million subscriptions, and Egypt with 111.1 million, according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database.

Feb 6, 2024

China: The World’s Biggest 5G Market

With an estimated 750 million active subscriptions at the end of September 2023, China has the world’s largest 5G mobile market by far.

Dec 27, 2023

Iliad and Vodafone: More Consolidation in Italy?

French telco group Iliad has submitted a proposal to UK-based Vodafone Group regarding the potential merger of their respective operations in Italy.

If successful, the merger will have a big impact on the Italian mobile market, reducing it from five players to four, while also combining the fixed broadband operations of the two companies.

The deal is by no means guaranteed to go through, however. Even if Vodafone’s response is positive, regulatory authorities must then study its effects on competition.

Nov 28, 2023

5G Progress Report: Brazil

Brazil’s multi-band 5G spectrum auction drew to a close in November 2021, generating total commitments of BRL47.2 billion ($8.5 billion).

The auction process attracted bids from a mixture of major players like Telefonica Brasil (Vivo), Claro Brasil, and TIM Brasil, established regional players such as Algar Telecom and Sercomtel, and a number of lesser-known participants.

Two years later, we examine the respective progress of Brazil’s 5G licensees. 

Nov 21, 2023

Head in the Cloud, Toes at the Edge

I'm back with a new episode of TeleGeography Explains the Internet.

In the hot seat this time: Nokia's Paul Unbehagen. Paul has a deep history in the networking world, so he approaches his role at Nokia—NE Americas CTO—from the perspective of a network engineer.

Although our main topics this week are enterprise cloud and right-sizing cloud utilization, we use those as a springboard into many topics circling the state of the network in 2023.

Nov 15, 2023

All Change in Ethiopia

Until recently, Ethiopia was one of the few telecom markets in the world that was still a monopoly, with no competition to state-owned firm Ethio Telecom.

Nov 7, 2023

Why 4G Is Still Relevant for Enterprise Connectivity

This week on TeleGeography Explains the Internet, we welcome SmartCIC CEO Toby Forman to the show.

Jun 28, 2023

Chinese Checkers: Will the EU Block Huawei and ZTE From 5G Rollouts?

In the last few years, Huawei, ZTE, and other Chinese equipment suppliers have come under increasing scrutiny due to alleged links with the Beijing government, raising serious security concerns for Western powers.

Following the U.S. government's ban on Chinese 5G technology, China-based vendors now face problems elsewhere.

The European Union (EU) is considering an outright ban of Chinese equipment across Europe’s 5G networks.

Mar 27, 2023

Tracking 5G Deployments in the Middle East and Africa

According to the latest data from TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database Service, as of March 2023, 18 countries in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region are served by commercial 5G services.

This includes eight in the Middle East and 10 in Africa.

Feb 28, 2023

Subsea Cable Infrastructure and Climate Change

We're closing out February with our top five telecom reading recommendations from the month.

First up: a look at how submarine cables are vulnerable to sea-level rise, storms, and other climate impacts.