French telco Free will appeal the "unprecedented" decision of privacy regulator CNIL to fine it and Free Mobile 15 million euros ($17.5 million) and 27 million euros ($31.5 million), respectively, for failing to keep 24 million subscribers' data secure, a spokesperson for Iliad Group, which owns the providers, said in an emailed statement Wednesday. It intends to appeal the decision to France's Supreme Administrative Court, the spokesperson added.
U.S.-based First Orion announced an agreement last week with Deutsche Telekom to offer branded calling services to business customers across Germany. It allows companies to display a verified brand identity directly on a customer’s mobile device when making calls over Deutsche Telekom’s network. “The collaboration marks a significant step in enhancing trust in voice communications across the German market,” First Orion said Thursday.
Italy and Switzerland are seeing increased fiber broadband penetration in households, showing that well-designed government policies and regulations can incentivize the broadband and cloud industries, the World Broadband Association said Monday. In its 2025 broadband and cloud development report, the group said the fixed broadband market across Latin America is increasingly driven by fiber as telcos and cable companies invest in the technology and phase out their copper and cable infrastructure. As of the end of 2024, Latin America had a fiber penetration rate of 37%, eclipsing North America's 28%.
The ITU listed its achievements this year in a newsletter Tuesday, but it came with a warning. Multilateralism is “under strain, even as emerging technologies reshape how we work, learn, communicate, and make decisions every day,” said a statement from ITU Secretary General Doreen Bogdan-Martin. ITU helped put “the global digital infrastructure investment gap firmly on the international agenda.” The organization “supported global efforts to boost the resilience of submarine cables, the unseen arteries of global connectivity beneath the ocean,” she said. It also brought mobile and satellite providers together “around our shared mission of connecting everyone, everywhere, meaningfully” and "worked to digitize rural economies and expand technology opportunities for girls and women.”
Qualcomm announced Thursday that it completed its $2.4 billion purchase of British semiconductor company Alphawave Semi. Tony Pialis, the CEO and co-founder of Alphawave Semi, will now lead Qualcomm's data center business. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said his company “delivers high-performance, energy-efficient compute and AI solutions, and the addition of Alphawave’s technologies will strengthen our platforms and optimize performance for next-generation AI data centers.”
China’s CVC Testing Technology told the FCC that it welcomes the chance to speak with agency staff and answer questions as the commission examines revoking CVC's status as a certified testing lab (see 2509080058). “We note the positive momentum in U.S.-China relations, which has created an environment conducive to pragmatic dialogue and problem-solving,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 25-273.
Almost 9,500 attendees from 110 countries and territories attended the first Mobile World Congress for the Middle East and North Africa region last week in Doha, Qatar, GSMA said. The conference featured nearly 300 speakers and had more than 250 exhibitors and sponsors. The inaugural Ministerial Programme included 60 delegations from 49 countries and more than 10 intergovernmental organizations, GSMA said.
The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) objected to an FCC proceeding withdrawing its recognition as an accredited lab (see 2510170024). The academy also objected to instructions that it respond to an FCC complaint to the email address BadLabs25-267@fcc.gov. “In our view, the Commission’s move to revoke the accreditations of Chinese state-owned laboratories is primarily driven by political considerations rather than ‘security’ concerns” and is “unsupported by any evidence relating to quality or technical competence,” CAICT said in a filing posted Friday in docket 25-267.
WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman Claus Hetting slammed a recent opinion by the European Commission’s Radio Spectrum Policy Group that recommends using the upper 6 GHz band spectrum for licensed wide area coverage by carriers (see 2511170020). “Has the process of spectrum regulation in Europe finally lost its last semblance of legitimacy?” Hetting asked this week. “We can only speculate that the mobile industry knows very well that the upper 6 GHz band is largely useless for mobile -- and that the real tactic here is to keep the spectrum away from its rightful place, which is Wi-Fi.”
U.S-based DigitalBridge Group signed an agreement with KT, a Korean telecom carrier, to collaborate on next-generation AI data centers in Korea, the companies said Wednesday. The companies will explore developing “large-scale AI and cloud infrastructure in Korea, including AI factory–type data centers that could scale up to gigawatt facilities, requiring up to multi-billion-dollar investments.”