Women’s internet adoption on mobile phones has reached 37 per cent in India, while adoption among men remains stable, narrowing the gender gap from 40 per cent to 30 per cent, a global report showed on Wednesday. In 2023, an additional 120 million women connected to the internet via mobile globally. More women in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) are using mobile internet than ever before, 1.5 billion (66 per cent) in total, according to the report by the GSMA, a global organisation that represents mobile network operators worldwide. However, an alarming 785 million women remain unconnec ..read more

Malaysia’s Axiata and conglomerate Sinar Mas are in talks to merge their telecommunications operations in Indonesia to create an about $3.45 billion entity, the Malaysian firm said on Wednesday, as it seeks to tap into the growing demand in the local telecom sector. Bloomberg News had reported in late April that the owners of PT XL Axiata and PT Smartfren Telecom were discussing the structure of a potential combination of the two telecom firms. XL Axiata is currently Indonesia’s third-largest telecom operator, serving 58 million customers, followed by Smartfren, which has 32 million users. Ind ..read more

At an investor concall after fourth quarter results, Bharti Airtel said it is looking to invest in areas where it has weak market share, and added that the broadband penetration is still only 40 percent in homes, but is growing. The telecom company said it has stopped all investments in 4G, and the entire capacity enhancement is now only happening in 5G services, which it called a ‘future-proof’ technology. CEO Gopal Vittal said postpaid, B2B and Home services are areas when more work is required. Airtel told investors in the concall that tariff repair needs to happen across industry. The ARPU ..read more

ONEOTT Intertainment Limited (OIL), which says it is India’s fourth-largest Internet Service Provider (ISP), has entered into a strategic collaboration with the class A regional ISP Triple Play Broadband to leverage its fibre infrastructure and customer base to boost broadband penetration, while offering Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) and over-the-top (OTT) services. Triple Play Broadband is predominantly present in Delhi and the national capital region. “OIL has been on an aggressive growth drive and the alliance with Triple Play and acquisition of a majority in Seven Star’s broadband business i ..read more

ZEE Entertainment on Wednesday secured the exclusive broadcast and streaming rights for the third season of the DP World International League T20 (ILT20) in India and across the world. Viewers can watch the tournament live on ZEE’s linear TV channels, OTT platform ZEE5 and on its syndicate partners’ TV and digital networks, the company said in a press release. Season 3 of the DP World ILT20 will begin from January 11, 2025. The 34-match tournament will run till February 9, 2025. The event will be hosted in UAE at three venues – Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah. The Season 3 announcement comes afte ..read more

Amazon Web Services (AWS) said on Wednesday it plans to invest 7.8 billion euros ($8.44 billion) in Germany through 2040 as it builds a cloud computing infrastructure specifically for Europe. AWS last year announced plans to store data on servers located in the European Union to protect data privacy for government and customers in highly regulated industries. The company said it will launch several data centres in the German state of Brandenburg by the end of 2025 which will be available to all customers. The new investment would support an average 2,800 full-time jobs in local German business ..read more

India plans to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the food processing sector to improve efficiency, enhance farmers’ incomes and reduce the environmental impact, officials said on Wednesday. At a conference organised by NIFTEM (National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management) on using frontier technologies in the sector, senior bureaucrats and government advisors stressed the need for a roadmap to deploy AI tools, which are still at a nascent stage in the country’s massive food processing industry. “As an industry, we need to create a roadmap. The MEITY ..read more

India has surpassed major countries like Australia, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Singapore, and Korea becoming the country with the highest data centre capacity of 950 MW in the Asia-Pacific region (excluding China), according to a private report released on Wednesday. India is also likely to record the highest capacity addition of 850 MW during the 2024-2026 period, higher than major APAC countries, according to the report published by real estate consultancy CBRE. “India’s data centre sector, with its resilience and potential for attractive returns, has emerged as a beacon of opportunity for invest ..read more

Copper demand linked to data centres and artificial intelligence (AI) could add around 200,000 metric tons per year by 2030, significantly less than some other market estimates, Australian financial group Macquarie said in a note on Wednesday. “There has been a lot of recent hype over the potential impact of data centres and AI on copper demand, with reported estimates ranging from 500,000 tons to over 2 million tons per year by 2030. We think the actual impact will be considerably lower than this,” analysts at Macquarie said in the note. Macquarie estimates that 95,000 tons of copper a year w ..read more

During the company’s annual I/O developer conference yesterday (14 May), Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai (pictured) stated AI Overviews will expand from the US to billions of users across various countries by year-end. AI Overviews uses Google’s Gemini AI model to create search summaries that appear alongside of traditional link-bases search queries. At the conference Liz Reid, who is chief of Google’s Search division, stated “generative AI search will do more for you than you ever imagined”. “Whatever is on your mind, whenever you need to get done, just ask and Google will do the googli ..read more