Airtel Extends Malawi License for a Further 10 Years:

Bharti Airtel's subsidiary in Malawi has secured a 10-year extension to its mobile operating license, although it has been censured for missing customer care obligations in the past.

The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) confirmed the renewal of the license with effect from next February. The 10-year license follows on from the original 15 year license awarded in February 1999 to the company's previous name, Celtel.

"The performance assessment conducted revealed significant contributions of Airtel Malawi to the country's socio-economic growth, developed innovative products and services," the regulator said in a statement. It did however fault the network for missing customer care obligations.

The two sides have to negotiate the technical details of the license conditions before it is formally handed over by next February.

Airtel Malawi establishes new data centre:

One of Malawi’s two mobile phone service companies, Airtel Malawi has unveiled a new data centre in Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre which double Airtel’s capacity, thereby enabling the company to host additional ICT infrastructure.

Airtel Malawi Managing Director Saulos Chilima disclosed that his company has injected over US$1 million into the project which will support customers’ growing business needs.

“The data centre will enable Airtel Malawi provide first class data services to customers as it will help eliminate congestion on the systems and ensure systems stability,” declared Chilima who presided over its Commissioning.

Following the launch of the new data centre, Chilima said Airtel Malawi will now unveil cloud computing systems in the next few weeks.

“As a result of the project’s investment, it is expected that Airtel will improve stability of the systems, increase the service offerings and respond to customer’s needs more favourably,” said Chilima.

He explained that cloud computing is an overarching term which defines the myriad tools that enable idea-sharing, non-hierarchical decision making and the full utilisation of the world’s massive ‘cognitive surplus’ the ability of the world’s population to collaborate on large, sometimes global projects.

Chilima says cloud computing brings together the strengths of cloud sourcing, automation and machine learning.