The Digital Digest: MTN's mobile money strikes gold, PDG's billion-dollar data centre plan, a boost for satellites in Kazakhstan, and taking carrier networks cloud native

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 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.