Saudi Vision 2030 is an ambitious plan aimed at empowering small and mid-sized enterprises while enhancing the quality of life for Saudi citizens. A key pillar of this vision is the provision of high-quality broadband access across the Kingdom.
Traditionally, optical fiber deployment in Saudi Arabia faced challenges due to the extreme heat, often exceeding 50°C in the summer. To overcome this, Zain KSA adopted 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) for home users and small businesses. FWA requires only a Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) device to convert 5G signals into high-performance Wi-Fi.
Since its introduction, FWA has seen remarkable success among Zain’s Saudi users, with usage doubling annually since 2020. Currently, 10% of FWA users connect up to 10 devices per CPE, leveraging new services such as Extended Reality (XR), gaming, and IoT. By 2025, it is anticipated that customers will require an estimated 500Mbps to fully support these services.
To meet the evolving demands of its users, Zain KSA, in collaboration with Huawei, developed the FWA² solution tailored for three distinct user segments.
The first segment, home users, benefits from the FWA Pro solution. This innovative networking model combines a single wireless CPE with a single fiber per room to support multiple applications. Its deployment features extremely large antenna arrays (ELAAs), carrier aggregation technologies, and high-performance 5G CPEs. The solution ensures a stable ultra-high downlink speed of over 300Mbps and latency under 10ms, supporting 8K video streaming, large-scale cloud gaming, home security monitoring, and VR sports for multiple concurrent users.
The second segment, users without home broadband or those requiring a lower-speed network, is served by Zain KSA’s new FWA Lite solution. Utilizing RedCap CPEs, this solution offers downlink rates of up to 150Mbps, providing a 30% better user experience than 4G WTTx, while consuming 50% less power than standard 5G CPEs. Zain KSA plans to migrate 4G WTTx users to 5G FWA this year, with the solution also ideal for extending home broadband to unconnected regions in the Gulf.
The third segment, business users such as retail outlets, warehouses, and banks undergoing digital transformation, is targeted by the new FWA Business Solution. This solution is designed to expand the super uplink service market for SMEs, offering deterministic assurance with 5.5G high-bandwidth private lines. It guarantees uplink rates between 50Mbps and 1Gbps, with latency under 20ms and 99.99% reliability.