The rising cost of memory chips is sending ripples to all corners of the tech industry and will soon arrive at the mobile network operators, which still rely on smartphone sales for a good portion of their revenues. The impact will be more keenly felt by operators in developed telecoms markets, where equipment sales provide as much as a fifth of overall wireless revenues. US carriers in particular, will be aware of the challenges of the smartphone market. However, for operators in the Global South that run leaner operations providing largely connectivity, the cost of smartphones will not have such an immediate effect. The frenzied growth in data center projects in the last three years, driven by the AI boom,…