Page 91 - SAMENA Trends - February-March 2021

ARTICLE SAMENA TRENDS

ARTICLE

New Data Centers and CDN Points of Presence in the

Middle East and their Impact on the User Experience

SpeedChecker shares their insights on how the new AWS and Azure data centers in the
Middle East have contributed to reducing latency and improving the user experience.

In recent years it's without question that operators in the region
are improving the user experience considerably. 5G dominates the
industry, focusing both on the investment front as well as on the
marketing push. A less sexy topic to boast about is the continuous
drive to improve the interconnections which play a major role in
improving the user experience as well. Operators, when launching
5G, often accompany marketing messages with speed test
app screenshots showcasing 1Gb+ speeds. This indicates the
challenge in the industry to find the real use cases for 5G as, surely,
the purpose of 5G is not just making speed tests faster.

Operators, when launching 5G, often
accompany marketing messages with
speed test app screenshots showcasing
1Gb+ speeds. This indicates the challenge
in the industry to find the real use cases for
5G as, surely, the purpose of 5G is not just
making speed tests faster.

Janusz Jezowicz At SpeedChecker we look beyond measuring fastest 5G speeds:
CEO our testing methodologies look at capturing data on the user
experience such as video streaming, web browsing or services
SpeedChecker relying on low latency. One of the topics that we feel does not
get enough attention from the industry is the impact of new data
centers in the region and how they improve the latencies and, in
effect, user experience of many services which are hosted in the
region and are latency sensitive.

First Microsoft Azure and then, soon after, Amazon AWS launched
new data centres in the Middle East. Azure launched in the United
Arab Emirates in June 2019 and AWS launched in Bahrain in July
2019.

Shortly after the launch SpeedChecker evaluated the connections
to the new data centers from the Middle East region. The results
were not pretty: most of the connections to both Azure in UAE and
AWS in Bahrain were not providing low latency links that would
improve the quality of experience. With the exception of Bahrain

91 FEB-MAR 2021