In the coming years, a majority of households in Muscat will be pampered with high-speed broadband for Internet Protocol television (IPTV), online gaming, CCTV monitoring systems and other value-added services that symbolise a smart home or smart city. This was revealed to the Observer by Said al Mandhari, CEO, Oman Broadband Company (OBC).
"We are expecting to have some of these services from next year as we would have connected 60 per cent of the Muscat households with optic fibre broadband network for high-speed Internet by the end of 2016," he said.
As per OBC estimates, around 80 per cent of Muscat and around 25 per cent of cities and towns outside the capital area will be covered by optic fibre, satellites and wire communications by late 2020.
Al Mandhari said that three telecom service operators, namely Omantel, Ooredooand and Awasr, have expressed interest to offer their services over Oman Broadband's infrastructure services. "Additionally, other service operators specialised in providing smart services might be also interested in the future to use the broadband infrastructure if they get their services licensed by Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA)," he said.
On Internet penetration in Oman, Al Mandhari said there has been too much dependency on the mobile bandwidth, which often leads to concerns of limited bandwidth. "The fixed broadband network, to begin with from Muscat, will help offloading some traffic from the mobile network and also give users high-speed Internet."
He added, "The target is not just to increase Internet penetration but to also facilitate use advanced Smart City and Smart Home applications." Starting from this year, OBC would have also started to layout the fibre optic cables in regions like Salalah and Mussandam.
Al Mandhari admitted that there are challenges related to the population distribution and geographical nature, but we are determined to make our dream of having a Smart Oman come true. The sultanate has seen a good development on the mobile network front, but has been slow on the growth of fixed broadband. This led the government to put forward a plan for more bandwidth that will make our cities and homes smart.
He said OBC has an agreement with ITA to develop an optic fibre network that will facilitate e- services in all headquarters of government agencies and ministries in Muscat. Our aim is to complete this project within 12 months from the date of signing the agreement.
"As all government agencies have their own network, the planned integrated will help easy services, consolidation of data, and ensure files are secured.
Al Mandhari said the current challenge is in extending this network to outside Muscat, but we are in coordination with all government utilities to make use of some of their current networks. Thirteen tenders have been released so far to expand the optic fibre network in all governorates outside Muscat.
He said the company currently gets its seed funding from the Ministry of Finance, but in the long run will have its own financing and revenue models through leasing of its infrastructure, loans and bonds.
He added that still around 28 per cent of the areas in Oman cannot be reached either by fibre network or telecom towers of the operators. "For this, we need to depend on the satellites and that business can be sustained only through government subsidies."
To conclude, he said that while OBC has funds allocated for most its projects, the current level of low prices may still slow down the progress of some of the new or planned projects.