Financial Times

Nyarugusu on the border of Tanzania and Burundi, one of the largest refugee camps in the world, is an unlikely pioneer in how the telecoms industry views refugees. Established in 1996, it has population of 150,000. Vodacom, Vodafone’s African arm, installed a 3G tower within Nyarugusu in 2016, which it now shares with commercial rivals Tigo and Airtel. The tower is running at full capacity, according to the GSMA, the mobile industry trade body, but more striking is the average revenue per user of $4.40. That is slightly higher than the average revenue per user for the rest of Tanzania.

The European Commission has hit Google with a €4.3 billion (~$5.6 billion) fine, imposing a record penalty on the US group for abusing its dominant position in the Android operating system for mobile phones. The decision takes aim at a core part of Google’s business strategy over the past decade, outlawing restrictions on its Android operating system that allegedly entrenched Google’s dominance in online search at a time when consumers were moving from desktop to mobile devices. The commission found that Google had used illegal “tying” methods to force phonemakers to pre-install Google serv

Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox has agreed to new terms to acquire Sky, the pan-European TV group, in a deal worth £24.5 billion that is designed to see off a rival offer from US media giant Comcast.

Germany’s top telecommunications regulator has set its sights on US technology groups such as Google and Facebook, insisting that providers of messaging and email services should be regulated just like ordinary telecommunications companies. “What we are seeing is that the line between traditional telecommunications services and web-based services like [Google’s] Gmail and [Facebook’s] WhatsApp has become very blurred.