Industry News

India's largest telecommunications company has stated its plans to abolish national roaming charges. Chairman of Bharti Airtel, Sunil Bharti Mittal made the announcement at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Mittal is also the chairman of the GSMA and during his address he also called for a cessation of international roaming charges. Bharti Airtel scrapped domestic roaming charges and also suspended charges on incoming calls, text messages and data services - in addition to this no premium will be charged on outgoing calls from April 1st - as part of Airtel's radical overhaul of its services and policies.

Chinese electronics manufacturer Xiaomi have finally ended months of speculation by officially announcing its intentions to launch in Pakistan with analysts suggesting that this move represents the firm’s ambition to restart its global expansion.

ZTE, a leading Chinese global mobile device maker unveiled its ‘Gigabit Phone’ at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The company boasted that its device is the first smartphone in the world that has download speeds of up to 1Gbps.

Australia’s leading telecommunications company Telstra has reported a slump in first half profit - as the combination of increased competition in the market and a shift towards digital have had a significant impact. Its fixed-line and mobile businesses both took a big hit due to the aforementioned factors above, with net profit after tax for the first-half to December 31st also plummeting a sharp 14.4% to AUS$1.79 billion ($US1.38 billion) from the previous period twelve months ago.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, ZTE, and China Mobile announced plans to conduct interoperability testing and over-the-air field trials based on the 5G New Radio (NR) specifications being developed by 3GPP.

Taiwan-based HTC posted disappointing Q4 results this month, with analysts suggesting that its hyped up virtual reality (VR) products failed to boost revenue for the smartphone manufacturer. HTC’s revenue from October to December 2016 was down 13.62 percent year on year to Tw$22.2 billion ($720 million).

The New Zealand Commerce Commission has rejected a multi-billion dollar merger deal between Vodafone New Zealand and pay-TV operator Sky, over concerns that the combined companies would have too much market power in the country.

Hong Kong-based PCCW, the holding company of HKT Group Holdings Limited, the information and communications technology company, reportedly plans to raise HK$8.53 billion ($1.09 billion) through the sale of 840.7 million share stapled units in subsidiary HKT.

South Korean multinational conglomerate Samsung Electronics have made an exciting announcement in relation to its journey towards 5G – following the commercial release of a Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) for the next generation technology.

Huawei announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with DPDHL Supply Chain, the leading mail and Logistics Company, to develop a range of supply chain solutions for customers using industrial-grade Internet of Things (IoT) hardware and infrastructure.