5G activity continues apace in the Middle East, with a new smart campus initiative announced in Saudi Arabia and a 26GHz 5G launch planned for the UAE – potentially this year.
Saudi Arabian telecommunications company STC, which offers both fixed and mobile communications services, has announced the successful deployment of what it calls the first 5G smart campus in the MENA region.
The 5G Smart Campus Network, as it’s known, is described as the entry point for stc’s ongoing effort to offer vertical industries in the kingdom 5G-powered services. With the high throughput and very low latency that 5G offers, the smart campus will, says STC, facilitate the introduction of intelligent applications and advanced use cases such as 5G CCTV, cloud PC, cloud gaming, cloud VR, 5G live broadcasting, AR, remote assistance and drone inspection in 5G.
Among industries that could benefit from the new smart campus, stc cited oil rigs, gas exploration, education, medical treatment, mining and other industries with diversified and remote infrastructure.
This initiative is part of stc’s plans to incubate new 5G use cases, particularly focusing on the enterprise market. stc partnered with Huawei for this project.
Another 5G first may soon be on the way, this time from the UAE, whose Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) expects the country to be the first market in the Middle East to begin using higher-frequency mmWave spectrum for 5G services (5G services using 3.5GHz frequencies are already available).
News reports quote a TRA representative as suggesting that 26GHz will be allocated this year, mainly for Dubai Expo 2020, which begins in October.