Canada revealed plans to ban operators from buying equipment from Huawei and ZTE in a bid to safeguard the country’s national security, a move that pushes the Chinese vendors from Western markets and entrenches them further in emerging markets.
Lesotho has joined the rush to register SIM cards, threatening that mobile network users who fail to comply with the legal registration of SIM cards will be cut off until they do so.
The silver jubilee celebrations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) seem to have been the occasion for some important announcements too – notably announcements involving 5G and long-awaited Department of Telecommunications (DoT) reforms.
More controversy seems imminent in the row about Safaricom’s alleged dominance of the Kenyan market. African press reports now suggest that the operator’s mobile termination rates (MTRs) are soon going to be controlled by the government in a bid to protect Safaricom’s smaller rivals.
An interesting story recently highlighted in the Indian press raises the possibility that India’s ongoing 4G expansion and 5G rollout may face an additional problem apart from unattractive pricing and arguments over spectrum allocation. Another issue, reports suggest, could be testing.
