The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has introduced a guide for adopting privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), and a national data protection certification scheme. This Global Trends Flash outlines key features of these initiatives, which parallel similar initiatives in other jurisdictions such as Japan, Korea, and the UK, amongst others.

This Global Trends Flash provides an overview of the Australian National Anti-Scam Centre’s (NASC) latest initiative: the Romance Scam Fusion Cell (RSFC). The RSFC is the third, temporary multi-stakeholder task force that NASC launches since its creation. But Australia is only one of many countries targeting romance scams, one of the most financially and emotionally damaging scam types around the world.

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) announced the establishment of the international application-to-person (A2P) messaging aggregator service licence in July 2025. The new licensing category aims to eliminate grey-route traffic for A2P services, by requiring all inbound international A2P messages terminating in Nigeria to transit through licensed aggregators in the country. This Global Trends Flash also highlights that, across Africa, regulatory frameworks addressing international A2P messaging services remain limited.

Rwanda’s largest mobile network operator, MTN Rwanda, recently announced the rollout of its 5G network infrastructure across key locations in the country’s capital, Kigali. According to the operator, 5G availability will help accelerate the country’s socio-economic progress while empowering individuals, businesses, and communities. This Global Trends Flash also highlights that, in addition to Rwanda, several other African countries engaged in 5G-related activity in 1H 2025, including commercial launches, pilot trials, and initial infrastructure rollouts.

Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) concluded its auction of the 850 MHz, 1500 MHz, 2100 MHz and 2300 MHz spectrum frequency bands. This Global Trends flash highlights key details of the auction results, which strengthened the 5G network capabilities of Thailand’s two leading operators, AIS and True. This is significant, as Thailand lags behind other Asian countries (e.g. Malaysia and Singapore) in 5G speeds due to limited mid-band spectrum.

A landmark legal case in Kenya involving the World project, created by Tools for Humanity (TFH), has led the country’s data protection authority, the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC), to release a draft guidance note on processing biometric data. This Global Trends Flash reports on the TFH case and summarises the main aspects of the draft guidance. Kenya is joining a growing number of countries setting the pace for responsible biometric data governance in a context of growing scrutiny about global projects based on the collection and use of biometric data, such as World and Worldcoin.