Business Wire

TELECOMS

Share
Developing Telecoms comments on how connectivity helps fight COVID-19 in Africa

Developing Telecoms has participated in this week’s Huawei Better World Summit which explored the impact of COVID-19 globally, and examined how ICT and 5G technologies can minimize disruption and fight back against the virus while sustaining business operation.

MTN, one of Huawei’s partners at the summit, a pan-African and Middle East group headquartered in South Africa that delivers voice, data, digital and financial services to a customer base of +250 million, outlined its BRIGHT strategy comprising of 6 pillars including Best Network, Returns, Ignite Commercial Performance, Growth in Digital and Data, Hearts and Minds as well as Technology Excellence. This is helping MTN to achieve the goal of 300 million subscribers by 2022, 200 million of which will be data users, and 100 million digital services users.

During the summit, MTN’s Bernice Samuels showed how MTN recognized the onset of COVID-19 as an economic and humanitarian crisis in addition to a health crisis and was able to leverage its resources and footprint very quickly to provide help across its markets.

MTN introduced financial relief measures to support employees experiencing financial hardship, and work from home measures to continue operating the business and supporting its customers. All contact and call centres were furnished with work-from-home toolkits to keep service levels uninterrupted.

For customers, the focus was threefold:

  1. Communication around safety, prevention and preventing social stigmatization of people who were infected;
  2. Delivering relief by taking the form of like SMS or free allowances or traffic to educational institutions when they were closed, support for hospital staff, and free P2P money transfers;
  3. Support broader needs around the provision of vital supplies.

MTN also partnered with UNECA (United Nations Economic Commission in Africa) in June to enhance the ability of governments to undertake needs assessments measuring the efficacy of their communications, as well as to supplement and complement population screenings.

Digital is always spoken of as a disruptor, and the powerful shifts coming from digital are sometimes viewed as unsettling and chaotic. Developing Telecoms thinks the COVID-19 Pandemic has shown that this is wrong. Digital is not only a massive enabler to deliver convenience, safety, access, personalization and efficiency, digital can even help fight the crisis.

Developing Telecoms expects MTN will continue working with Huawei together to accelerate digital transformation capability, enabling their customers to enjoy the benefits of a modern connected digital life.

About Developing Telecoms

Developing Telecoms is the leading online news portal for telecoms in emerging markets, delivering telecommunications news and information for senior management and decision makers at network operators, governments and end users. Developing Telecoms receives 2.2 million yearly page views and gets over 760,000 yearly online visitors. Its weekly emerging markets newsletter has over 40,000 subscribers. Developing Telecoms publishes a range of special reports about telecoms in emerging markets spanning topics including 5G, IoT, Smart Cities and Last Mile Connectivity.

About Business Wire

Business Wire
Business Wire
101 California Street, 20th Floor
CA 94111 San Francisco

http://businesswire.com

Subscribe to releases from Business Wire

Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Latest releases from Business Wire

Nominations open for The MIDORI Prize for Biodiversity 2026 by AEON Environmental Foundation and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity16.1.2026 09:00:00 CET | Press release

The MIDORI Prize recognizes outstanding individual contributions to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversityThe unique prize contributes to raising public awareness of the essential role biodiversity plays for human well-being and in addressing global challenges such as climate changeThe Award Ceremony and Award Winners Forum will be held on 27 August 2026 in Tokyo, Japan The call for nominations for The MIDORI Prize for Biodiversity 2026 is open from 2 February to 31 March 2026. Nominations are invited from members of the public through the AEON Environmental Foundation website at https://www.aeonkankyozaidan.or.jp/en/prize/. The Award Ceremony and Award Winners Forum of the 2026 edition of the Prize will be held on 27 August in Tokyo, Japan. These events will contribute to the global mobilization around COP 17 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which will take place in Yerevan (Armenia) under the theme of “Taking action for Nature”. Co-organized by the AEON

Tigo Energy and Weco Certify MLPE-Inverter Compatibility to Simplify PV System Design16.1.2026 06:00:00 CET | Press release

Tigo MLPE technology and hybrid inverters of Italian manufacturer Weco are now certified to work together to enhance design flexibility, system performance, and seamless integration. Tigo Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ: TYGO) (“Tigo” or “Company”), a leading provider of intelligent solar and energy software solutions, today announced the Company has signed a certificate of compatibility with Weco S.r.l., documenting the compatibility between Tigo Flex MLPE products and hybrid solar inverters from Weco. The certification covers certain single-phase and three-phase Weco products and members of the Tigo TS4-A and TS4-X product families, when properly designed and installed. Together, these products are designed to deliver high-quality, enhanced value through a system that generates and manages solar energy more efficiently and delivers the features residential energy customers demand. “The compatibility between our inverter solutions and Tigo optimizers represents a significant step forward for the

Binarly to Unveil “Broken Trust” Research: Firmware Bypass Chains, BMC Persistence, and EDR Evasion15.1.2026 23:04:00 CET | Press release

Binarly, the industry leader in software and firmware supply-chain security, today announced an upcoming DistrictCon presentation “Broken Trust: Firmware Bypass Chains, BMC Persistence, and EDR Evasion.” The session will detail how firmware-level attack chains observed in shipped enterprise devices can effectively undermine modern endpoint defenses, enabling stealthy compromise and long-lived persistence. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260115834965/en/ Binarly Unveils Broken Trust Research: Firmware Bypass, BMC Persistence In this presentation, the Binarly REsearch team will dismantle the assumption of hardware trust by presenting multiple real-world firmware bypass chains. Alex Matrosov and Fabio Pagani will provide a deep dive into the specific vulnerability classes and exploitation primitives that make these attacks reliable in practice. The team will also deliver a live demonstration compromising a fully

Coolbrook Named on the 2026 Global Cleantech 10015.1.2026 18:14:00 CET | Press release

Coolbrook, a transformational technology and engineering company on a mission to decarbonise major industrial sectors like petrochemicals and chemicals, iron and steel, aluminium, and cement, has been named on Cleantech Group’s 2026 Global Cleantech 100. This annual list recognizes companies poised to deliver market-ready solutions that advance a cleaner, more resilient global future. The report highlights innovators addressing some of the world’s most urgent environmental and infrastructure challenges. The complimentary report introduces you to innovators advancing groundbreaking technologies and business models to enable us to act on the ever-increasing climate and environmental crisis. Following a 2025 marked by geopolitical volatility and shifting economic signals, the global cleantech ecosystem enters 2026 with slightly greater certainty - yet heightened competitive pressure. Growth is concentrating around two dominant themes: AI infrastructure and critical minerals. “The 2026 Glo

World Economic Forum and Salesforce Empower Global Leaders With First-of-its-Kind Agentic Assistant for the 2026 Annual Meeting in Davos15.1.2026 18:01:00 CET | Press release

The Forum activates its vast data stores through Agentforce 360, enabling a level of preparation and decision-making for its over 3,000 attendees previously unachievable by human processing alone Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the world’s #1 CRM, today announced the activation of the World Economic Forum’s institutional knowledge powered by Agentforce 360 to support over 3,000 of the world’s most influential leaders at the 2026 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. The Forum has launched a new proactive, high-precision concierge app, “EVA,” built on the Agentforce 360 Platform, Salesforce’s agentic platform. EVA will empower attendees to move beyond traditional information access, with an AI agent that doesn’t just answer questions, but can reason, prioritize, and act on a leader’s behalf for the 2026 Annual Meeting. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260115571119/en/ Scheduled for January 19–23 in Davos, Switzerland, th

In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.

Visit our pressroom
World GlobeA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.HiddenA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.Eye