General News

Amr Talaat, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, and Sherif Elwy, the managing director and vice chairman of the Arab African International Bank (AAIB), witnessed the signing of a protocol establishing a partnership between the Information Technology Institute (ITI) of the AAIB and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), and AAIB, aiming to upskill and qualify young people to increase their chances of getting a job at AAIB in different technology domains.

ST Engineering iDirect, a global leader in satellite communications, announced that Kacific, a leading satellite broadband operator in Asia Pacific, has successfully deployed its pioneering Mx-DMA® MRC (Multi Resolution Coding) technology in conjunction with its first Ka-band satellite, Kacific1, to provide high-speed, low-cost, ultra-reliable broadband to rural and suburban areas of the Pacific and Southeast Asia.

The National Telecom Regulatory Authority of Egypt (NTRA) has initiated procedures to boost the efficiency of basic telecommunications services in Sinai Peninsula. NTRA has actually started to finance establishing and operating cell sites for 30 urban areas as well as 4 major roads, with an overall length of 112 km and at a total cost of EGP 513 million.

Temenos, the banking software company, announced that Midbank, a universal bank in Egypt providing retail, corporate, and investment banking services, has selected Temenos' open banking platform to power its digital transformation. The bank will implement Temenos transact as its core product and Temenos Infinity digital banking platform to replace its legacy systems and streamline its systems and processes as part of a visionary IT transformation strategy. The Temenos banking platform will enable Midbank to meet customers' future needs and the bank's strategic goals as an agile, high-touch and high-tech bank.

Ghana’s finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta has announced that the government intends to introduce a 1.75% tax on electronic financial transactions (e-levy) in the 2022 budget. He said this was to “widen the tax net and rope in the informal sector”. The levy will cover all electronic transactions, including mobile money, bank transfers and other remittances, merchant payments. It will be borne by the sender, except for inward remittances, which will be borne by the recipient.

Smart address verification tech-driven product in Nigeria was recently launched by a Kenyan digital addressing system startup, OkHi Limited, and Interswitch Group, to focus on digitizing payments on the continent. After this launch, Quickteller, Interswitch's payments and wallet service, becomes the first Nigerian company to use OkHi's new service.

Telecommunications companies are facing the growing need of people to be connected to various global networks. As a consequence, telco providers are competing to provide them with the fastest, most affordable, and innovative services. To support this rapid growth, telecom companies need to solve the problems posed like managing data, controlling cost, and developing new services.

Heading into 2022, telecom companies have an even larger role to play as the fifth generation of wireless technology begins to gain traction among enterprises and consumers alike. 5G deployment has been on the fast track with nationwide efforts done to achieve mainstream adoption. In fact, in four-year time, 4.41 billion people will be able to use 5G services. This represents 53% of the world population, according to an analysis by Bankr.

Telecom Review is hosting a virtual panel under the theme of “Digital transformation driving the next phase of innovation” on November 10 at 4 pm (Dubai time). This panel will give C-level speakers the opportunity to discuss cloud’s role in digital transformation, meeting emerging opportunities and challenges, investing in digital skills to meet digital transformation goals, and the requirements and progress to build a digital world.

It has been revealed on the sidelines of GITEX 2021 that the Egyptian government is in the midst of setting the legal framework for the frequencies and licenses for 5G in order to begin proper deployment of 5G especially since it is an advanced technology that will bring a new breath to the Egyptian economy and improve the services received by the end-user.