Eutelsat and the African Telecommunications Union (ATU) will be holding a conference in Abidjan, Ivory Coast on 15-16 December on the transition to digital broadcasting and telecommunications services across West Africa. Organized in cooperation with West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS), the conference will bring together ITU and World Bank experts in addition to ICT ministers, broadcasters, regulators, policy-makers and finance institutions from 15 countries in the region, from Senegal to Nigeria.

ITU Telecom World 2014 closed its doors today following four busy days of high-level debate, networking, knowledge sharing and showcasing. A dynamic and truly diverse line-up of participants from around the world attended the event, including Cisco, Huawei, Intel, LS telcom, Nokia, Ooredoo, Rohde & Schwarz, Vodafone and ZTE, with pavilions from Argentina, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Chad, China, Hungary, Nigeria, Malaysia, Qatar, Tanzania, Thailand and Zimbabwe, while Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan and Rwanda came together within the Smart Africa zone on the show floor.

The World Teleport Association (WTA) published its annual rankings for the Top Teleport Operators of 2014. The annual rankings of companies by revenue and revenue growth are compiled by surveying teleport operators around the world as well as referencing the published results of publicly-held companies.

The debates and conversations which started this year in Doha, Qatar, are set to continue in Europe next year, as ITU announced today that its upcoming ITU Telecom World 2015 event will take place 12-15 October in Budapest, Hungary.

Spanish satellite telecommunications operator, HISPASAT, has contracted Space Systems Loral (SSL) to build the Amazonas 5 satellite, which will provide a wide range of telecommunications services in Latin America. This new satellite constitutes an expansion of the Amazonas 4B project, to which the full capacity of the Amazonas 4A was added.

Azercosmos OJC, national satellite operator of Azerbaijan, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with France's Airbus Defence and Space to take over the rights to operate and commercialize the SPOT 7 high resolution  optical Earth observation satellite, which was successfully launched on June 30, 2014. The satellite will be renamed as Azersky.

 Video interviews with key industry executives from Oilcomm 2014 in  Houston, Texas including JR Barallon, CEO, Proactive Energy; David Kagan, President, ITC Global  and David Sikorski, Sales Director, Energy Markets, Noarth America of SES.

The second International GS Summit of leading experts in telecommunications held November 18-19, 2014 in St. Petersburg, Russia, discussed content monetization trends.Over one hundred delegates from France, Great Britain, Finland, Russia, Cambodia, China, India, Pakistan and other countries participated in the event organized by the GS Group, an investment and industry holding company.

The demand for high throughput military satcom applications is growing as the use of unmanned aerial systems and implementation of command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance of C4ISR systems increase. High throughput satcom applications can support imagery streaming and seamless connectivity across tactical and strategic networks – capabilities which have become vital in the military space.

Over three billion people are now online and information and communication technology (ICT) growth remains buoyant in just about every country worldwide, according to ITU’s flagship annual Measuring the Information Society Report.

The report is widely recognized as the repository of the world’s most reliable and impartial global data and analysis on the state of global ICT development, and is extensively relied upon by governments, financial institutions and private sector analysts worldwide.