Page 37 - SAMENA Trends - September-October 2022

REGIONAL & MEMBERS UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

infrastructure expansion initiatives with of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, and France. emphasizes on to build its digital hub
the carrier community. Mobily’s wholesale Furthermore, to these two new cable ecosystem and they have recently partnered
strategy envisages the development of investments, Mobily has also highlighted with Equinix, a top-tier and the largest
state-of-the-art digital infrastructure that its recent Memorandum of Understanding global data center and Internet Exchange
will contribute to the achievement of KSA (MoU) with Telecom Egypt to construct platform provider, to establish full carrier-
Vision 2030 targets and the Kingdom’s the first point-to-point submarine cable neutral Internet Exchange (IX) in the JED1
focus to be the digital hub in the region. connecting the KSA to Egypt. MoU aimed datacenter facility, a significant gateway
Eng. Thamer Alfadda, Senior Vice President to explore various new ways to connect for traffic which place KSA digital bridge
of Wholesale & Carrier Services at Mobily, international capacity to Europe in the west, between Europe, Asia, and Africa and aims
highlighted that they accelerated national through Telecom Egypt's network, and to the to improve the peering ecosystem in the
and international infrastructure expansion GCC in the east, through Mobily's network, region. JED1 Data center will function as a
efforts across submarine and terrestrial which is made possible by expanding the network-dense and neutral interconnection
networks and DC capacity, as well as two companies' networks and connecting hub, which makes a compelling
new partnerships to enable a carrier- them to neighboring countries. Moreover, commercial case for global and regional
neutral internet ecosystem that is vital Terrestrial connectivity is a focus area on ISPs, Operators, OTTs, Content providers,
for the sustainable growth of ICT sector the infrastructure expansion. Benefiting and Enterprises to land and peer in Jeddah,
and contribute to Kingdom’s digital hub from Kingdom’s strategic geographic therefore decreasing latency with the
vision. Mobily’s infrastructure expansion position, Mobily has recently invested in removal of trombone effect that arises from
spans across several areas including border touchpoints with UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, the traffic to different hosting locations.
submarine cables, terrestrial networks, Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq, and Yemen to increase Mobily has also developed a strategic plan
data centers, and a neutral internet capacity and ensure seamless connectivity to expand Data Center capacity, where
exchange platform. Mobily has joined SEA- for Saudi terrestrial crossing (transit traffic) overall DC capacity will reach 10 MW, and
ME-WE 6 submarine cable consortium as well as the traffic that originates or this will also support Mobily’s digital hub.
and will land the 126Tbps capacity cable terminates in KSA, beside modernizing With these significant investments in
in its new Yanbu cable landing station the Saudi National Fiber Network (SNFN) national backbone, global interconnectivity,
when it becomes operational in 2025-Q1. with end-to-end network transformation integrated digital infrastructure, Data
Africa 1 is additionally other submarine and agile automation by constructing centers, and service delivery capabilities,
cable that Mobily invests in, which spans the Middle East's first 5G and B2B-driven, Mobily aims to strengthen its position as a
10,000km with landings in Kenya, Djibouti, ultra-broadband optical backbone network. leading digital enabler partner for operators
Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Kingdom Carrier neutrality is a key pillar that Mobily and digital ecosystem players in the region.

37 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2022