Telekom Malaysia Berhad (Malaysia), Vodafone Group (UK), Omantel (Oman), Etisalat (UAE), Reliance Jio Infocomm (India) and Dialog Axiata (Sri Lanka) signed the Construction and Maintenance Agreement and the Supply Contract for Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) submarine cable system in Kuala Lumpur on April 30, 2013. The BBG submarine cable system, spanning nearly 8,000 km, will link Malaysia (through Penang) and Singapore to the Middle East (Oman and United Arab Emirates) with connections reaching out to India (Mumbai and Chennai) and Sri Lanka. The construction of BBG is planned not only to provide connectivity between South East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East, but also to Europe, Africa and to the Far East Asia through interconnections with other existing and newly built cable systems landing in India, the Middle East and the Far East Asia. BBG will also serve as an extraordinary opportunity for business growth as it will help supporting current and future high capacity requirements from the surrounding areas of the region as well as next generation Internet applications. The construction of this cable system is a clear indication of the growing demand for bandwidth at the participating countries. The markets are expected to see strong growth with the continuous efforts in embracing the broadband technologies and infrastructure expansion. The BBG cable system is designed to provide upgradable and transmission facilities by adopting the 100Gbps technology. This cable system is expected to carry commercial traffic by the end of 2014.

Vodafone has announced that Mahindra Reva Electric Vehicles Pvt. Ltd. has powered its recently launched e2o electric vehicle - 'connected car' - with Vodafone's machine-to-machine (M2M) communication services. Drivers of the e2o can remotely access a range of features and functions by using a smartphone app or dedicated web page. Vodafone's communication technologies and M2M platform provide secure connectivity between the vehicle and the central application.

Six major Vodafone investors said $100 billion was not enough for stake of Vodafone Group Public Limited Company (LSE:VOD) in Cellco Partnership with Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) and urged the latter to come up with an offer of at least $120 billion. Verizon made a $100 billion bid to buy Vodafone's 45% stake in Cellco Partnership.