Over the past 12 months, Capacity Media has tracked these key trends, offering in-depth coverage and expert insights into the innovations redefining the industry.
Here are the top 12 stories of the year:
At the start of the year, we sat down with Jordan Sadler, SVP public and private investor relations at Digital Realty to find out more about its capital raising strategy heading into the year and more about its joint venture with Blackstone.
In February, Crown Castle co-founder Ted Miller published an open letter to chairman P. Robert Bartolo (Rob), in which he called for stronger action to address the challenged towerco’s financial situation.
The letter came as Crown Castle rejected four nominations from Miller to the company’s board, one of which was himself.
In March, we reported that four submarine cables running along the coast of West Africa were damaged or are experienced downtime, leading to internet outages in numerous countries across the region.
The impacted cables included the WACS, MainOne, SAT3, and ACE systems, with the faults reported by numerous sources to have occurred somewhere off the coast of Cote D’Ivorie.
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In April, Damage to the SEA-ME-WE 5 submarine cable system in the Straits of Malacca reportedly caused internet disruptions across South Asia.
At the time, a statement from Bangladesh Submarine Cables Company (BSCPLC), one of the owners of the system, suggested that the cable damage occurred 440km from Singapore.
As a result, at the time, all traffic between Singapore and SEA-ME-WE 5’s Kuakata landing station was down.
In May, Quantum Loophole, the developer of the first multi-gigawatt scale master-planned data center community, announced the sale of 150 acres at its campus in Frederick County, Maryland.
The closed agreement came hot on the heels of Maryland Governor Moore’s signing of the Critical Infrastructure Streamlining Act of 2024 (CISA), which clarified guidance for the use of backup generators for critical infrastructure developments, including data centres.
In June, the the head of Telenor Nordics, Jørgen Rostrup unexpectedly passed away while travelling in Asia for a board meeting.
At the time, Sigve Brekke, president and group CEO of Telenor Group, said: “Jørgen has been an essential member of our executive team in Telenor for many years, a good colleague and a dear friend for me personally. It is hard for me to understand that he has passed away.
“Today, my heart goes out to the family and friends. I share their grief,’ he added.
A global Microsoft outage that disrupted IT systems across multiple industries was linked to CloudStrike’s Falcon Sensor solution.
As a result, air travel, trains, payment systems, hospitals, and media services were among the services disrupted by a “Blue Screen of Death” that began appearing on the boot of Microsoft-powered IT systems.
In August, Africa’s largest tower company, IHS Towers, was rumoured to have been exploring a potential sale of its business in Rwanda and Zambia.
According to sources at the time, the towerco planned to gauge interest from potential buyers of its operations in both markets, with the proceedings to be used to alleviate some of the company’s outstanding debt.
In September, it was reported that Qualcomm reached out to Intel regarding a potential takeover of the company, which at the time held a market value of approximately $90 billion.
The winners of the 20th annual Global Connectivity Awards (GCAs) were revealed at a glitzy show in London following Capacity Europe 2024, with stc, Mobily, and Sparkle among those taking home awards.
Italian telecoms giant Sparkle inked a deal with Airtel Business, the B2B arm of Bharti Airtel.
The partnership saw Airtel benefit from additional capacity on the Blue and Raman submarine cable systems, which linked India to Italy, enhancing Airtel’s global undersea network.
Capacity in tandem with the Datacloud events series explored the key trends set to shape the industry, outlining insights into the challenges and innovations just on the horizon.
