In this episode of the Digital Digest, we roundup the biggest stories of the week from the Virgin/O2 deal to Chicago University's quantum plans.
Natalie covers the news that South Africa's MTN is reportedly eying up a valuation of more than $5 billion for its mobile money business while in Egypt, a US$35 billion rural fibre project has launched with a target to connect 58% of the population. Elsewhere, Orange Polska has formed a jointly owned fibre company with APG, the Dutch pension investment company and in the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority has rubber stamped the merger of O2 and Virgin.
Alan brings us the latest on Meng Wanzhou's extradition case and explains why the University of Chicago – which is already planning to build a quantum internet – has launched a programme to fund quantum technology start-ups. Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, a new satellite centre of excellence is being developed in association with UK/Indian operator OneWeb.
In data centres, Natalie explains the story behind Google's cloud region in Poland and Tencent's first data centre in Indonesia. In other news, Johnson Controls to acquire Silent-Aire for $870m, Nokia is supporting China Mobile's nation-wide public cloud roll out, and PDG has revealed plans for a $1 billion data centre expansion.
Joining this week's conversation, we also welcome Hannes Gredler and Richard Brandon, the founder/CTO and VP of marketing at RtBrick. Hannes and Richard talk about the history of the company, the need for disaggregated routing and why there is Lego in their logo.
At Capacitymedia.com you can find details on the Power 100, Capacity Latam and Capacity Middle East, and you can also catch up with the latest edition of Capacity magazine.
Season 2, episode 13 is presented by deputy editor Melanie Mingas and features editor-at-large Alan Burkitt-Gray, senior reporter Natalie Bannerman, and special guests Hannes Gredler and Richard Brandon from RtBrick.
