Page 24 - SAMENA Trends - February 2020

REGIONAL & MEMBERS UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

to work towards connecting the network he said. Omantel’s revenues increased by mobile operator, Omantel bought a stake
to more areas,” said Mr. Allawati, who 18.6 per cent to reach 2.59 billion Omani in Kuwait’s telecom operator Zain for more
projects “thousands” of new jobs emerging rials (Dh24.71bn) last year while net profit than $2.1bn in 2017. It is the company’s
out of the increased 5G usage in the grew more than 43 per cent to 299.7m second-largest shareholder after the
country. “TRA has signed an agreement Omani rials, according to the preliminary Kuwait Investment Authority sovereign
with Huawei to train 1,000 individuals on earnings posted on Muscat Securities fund. Vodafone, which joined forces with
5G tech … this number will be growing Market, where Omantel’s shares trade. Oman Future Telecommunications last
exponentially. “Many new verticals are Ooredoo ended the monopoly of Omantel in year, is expected to start its operations in
coming up and we just need to be ready for the sultanate when it started its operations Oman later this year.
that. The new jobs will be in thousands,” in 2004. Anticipating an entry of a third

stc Kuwait First Nationwide 5G Coverage in MENA
Region “E2E 5G Standalone Service ”

Kuwait Telecommunications Company (stc), a world-class digital simultaneously support both 5G Non-Stand Alone (NSA) and 5G
leader providing innovative services and platforms to customers SA. Consequentially, stc is competent to partner with vertical
enabling the digital transformation in Kuwait, announced its businesses to deliver a wide range of services to exceed its end
leadership position as Kuwait’s largest 5G network with 100 % 5G customer expectations (e.g. health, banking, oil & gas sectors,
coverage in populated areas. stc invested heavily in enhancing and more). “5G is here on a nationwide scale. Kuwaiti customers
its wireless network infrastructure to offer endless features to will have access to reliable and ultra-high-speed internet using
the Kuwaiti customers. stc is the first to provide live 5G data 5G network,” said Maziad Alharbi, CEO of stc. “Time became
transmission (Tx) in partnership with Huawei to deliver the reality, offering Dedicated Access to enterprise and the innovative
fastest and highest speed with new services and outstanding consumer to deliver endless services with guaranteed SLAs using
customer experience. This massive transformation in upgrading 5G Stand-Alone uplink with low latency experience. We welcome
the entire Tx network links to meet the range of 3Gbps – 10Gbps; all our customers to experience the end to end 5G SA with us.” he
which achieves an E2E (End to End) 5G Stand-Alone (SA) added.
solution from Devices to Network and billing with the ability to To leverage from this highly capable state of the art network, stc
in collaboration with HUAWE have designed and customised an AI
based solution to realize speed-based packages and services. The
solution allows the network planner to dynamically devote part
of the cell resources to speed-based packages to maintain their
speeds; and commercially launch B2B Dedicated Access (DA) and
Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) offering unique cost-efficient
business connectivity options via advanced technologies. A wide
range of use cases and verticals related to health and industrial
sectors have already shown great interest in these services. In
addition, stc is in process to launch fibre over the air B2H service,
in particular for the areas where public wired communication
infrastructure is insufficient, to enjoy the high speed internet
access.
On the Roadmap
stc is also planning on being the first to deploy a network slicing
technology that would help build private networks with high levels
of security that can serve banks, companies within the oil sector
and other large corporations.

24 FEBRUARY 2020