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Volume 10, May, 2019 A SAMENA Telecommunications Council Publication www.samenacouncil.org S AMENA TRENDS FOR SAMENA TELECOMMUNICATIONS COUNCIL'S MEMBERS BUILDING DIGITAL ECONOMIES Omantel: Gearing up for 5G in Oman 64 Interview goetzpartners: Don’t Be Rash – How to Achieve Sustainable AI ... 84 Featured Eng. Mazyad Bin Nasser Al-Harbi Brahim GHRIBI Chief Executive Officer Head of Government VIVA Telecom - Kuwait Relations MEA - Nokia THIS MONTH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN TELECOMS BUSINESS 7441_Et_Business Mobile App_SAMENA Magazine_A4.indd 1 5/21/19 1:36 PM VOLUME 10, MAY, 2019 Contributing Editors Knowledge Contributions Subscriptions Izhar Ahmad goetzpartners [email protected] SAMENA Javaid Akhtar Malik Huawei Omantel Advertising TRENDS [email protected] Publisher Editor-in-Chief SAMENA Telecommunications SAMENA TRENDS Bocar A. BA Council [email protected] Tel: +971.4.364.2700 CONTENTS 05 EDITORIAL FEATURED 13 REGIONAL & MEMBERS UPDATES Members News Regional News 67 SATELLITE UPDATES Satellite News 78 WHOLESALE UPDATES Wholesale News 86 TECHNOLOGY UPDATES Technology News 06 Eng. Mazyad Bin Nasser The SAMENA TRENDS newsletter is wholly Al-Harbi owned and operated by The SAMENA 92 REGULATORY & POLICY UPDATES Chief Executive Officer Telecommunications Council (SAMENA Regulatory News VIVA Telecom - Kuwait Council). Information in the newsletter is not intended as professional services advice, and A Snapshot of Regulatory SAMENA Council disclaims any liability for INTERVIEW Activities in the SAMENA Region use of specific information or results thereof. Articles and information contained in this Regulatory Activities publication are the copyright of SAMENA Telecommunications Council, (unless Beyond the SAMENA Region otherwise noted, described or stated) and cannot be reproduced, copied or printed ARTICLES in any form without the express written permission of the publisher. 64 Gearing up for 5G in Oman The SAMENA Council does not necessarily 76 Building an Evolvable IP Transport endorse, support, sanction, encourage, Network to Enable 5G Business verify or agree with the content, comments, opinions or statements made in The SAMENA Success TRENDS by any entity or entities. Information, products and services offered, sold or placed 84 Don’t Be Rash – How to Achieve in the newsletter by other than The SAMENA Sustainable AI Success Without Council belong to the respective entity or Falling for the Hype 09 Brahim GHRIBI entities and are not representative of The SAMENA Council. The SAMENA Council Head of Government hereby expressly disclaims any and all Relations MEA - Nokia warranties, expressed and implied, including but not limited to any warranties of accuracy, SAMENA COUNCIL reliability, merchantability or fitness for a ACTIVITY particular purpose by any entity or entities offering information, products and services 11 Comviva Joins SAMENA in this newsletter. The user agrees that The SAMENA Council is not responsible, and shall Council to Enhance its have no liability to such user, with respect to Presence in the MENA Region any information, product or service offered by any entity or entities in this newsletter. The SAMENA Council’s only liability in the event of errors shall be the correction or removal of the erroneous information after verification. CONTENTS© 2019 - All rights reserved. SAMENA TRENDS is a trademark of SAMENA Telecommunications Council. Exceptional experience with Superfast Home Internet Now you can enjoy a new dimension of entertainment, watch your favourite movies and latest series, play video games uninterrupted, and much more with unmatched speeds through fibre optic technology. Subscribe now! Terms and conditions apply. batelco.com EDITORIAL SAMENA TRENDS Artificial Intelligence in Telecoms Business With the deployment of complex new network It has to be recognized that 5G can’t be used services and new technological paradigm to its fullest potential without wide deployment shifts in play, the ever-rising demands of of 5G hardware and related equipment, and customer experience management among networks that are AI-driven. This requires an Operators now require more intelligence on unprecedented scale of collaboration and the networks. Thus operations, planning, understanding among local and national optimization, among other processes and regulators and private-sector stakeholders, procedures, need better decision-making and there is also a need to become ambitious and adaptive learning mechanisms. This is enough to implement multi-stakeholder where artificial intelligence (AI) comes into engagement models on the robust and ethical play. It is with AI that network operations can use of AI, and to define privacy limits and be automated to bring about enhancement in security boundaries across AI implementation customer experience, and take the notion of on the network, to both use and protect Bocar A. BA big data analysis and contextualized decision- network resources (including customer data) Chief Executive Officer & Board making based on that data to the next level. against misuse. Member SAMENA Telecommunications While AI has been in use for some time now, In relation to this, SAMENA Council’s Council especially as digital voice assistants or as Technology Provider and Operators members assistants in conducting precisely-defined are encouraged to provide their feed to SAMENA household tasks, or even as chat bots assisting Council’s Generic Policy, Legal and Regulatory in rectification of issues, or routing customers (“PLR”) Framework for Digital Services, which or buyers to new sales opportunities; it is is intended to to serve in a contextual capacity the use of AI in improving network efficiency, to provide high-level guidance to governments lowering operational costs, and improving QoS and regulatory authorities across the SAMENA in the new mobile networks, which is of most region (and beyond) in creating a thriving and interest to Operators, which have now entered supportive digital ecosystem that drives the the realm of autonomous learning. development and emergence of innovative and meaningful digital services and can Interestingly, any discussion on the 5G use- help push meaningful connectivity to the cases automatically brings attention to AI. next level. To this effect, this Framework can In the age “intelligent connectivity”, which also help take forward the discussion on AI we fully support and which we believe does implementation on networks to another level. have the potential to exponentially transform our digital economies and unlock a myriad In the age of autonomous learning, we have of opportunities across all economic sectors much to achieve by collaborating together and industries, artificial intelligence will be a and contributing our knowledge base and game-changer for networks, allowing for the experiences to create new intelligence, which ease to self-diagnose, self-heal, and self- can serve us all positively in achieving our optimize; allocating network resources and globally defined goals as Industry. Artificial fixing anomalies and customer issues before intelligence is the next big thing we must the customers come to hear of those issues or understand well, in order to harness its be impacted by them. beneficial use as we build the foundation of a thriving digital economy. 5 MAY 2019 FEATURED SAMENA TRENDS VIVA Speaks to SAMENA Council Q. What are VIVA’s latest digital offerings to enhance the experience of its customers? A. Improving customer experience and expanding our digital service portfolio are two key pillars of our overall digital transformation strategy, to enforce execution, VIVA was keen to introduce latest ICT technologies in its network including advanced 4G in 2013 and now 5G, ensuring best experience in term of offered speeds, coverage, and overall customer digital journey. VIVA spared no efforts to introduce new digital services covering video and music content offerings, gaming services, transportation vertical, and collaborated to a wide range of partners such as PUBG, VIU, Careem, Anghami, Wavo. In addition, are also exploring the 5G potential by actively testing new 5G use cases including AR/VR, AI, CCTV, IoT, and cloud services. The Kuwaiti market is characterized by high MBB traffic usage, current monthly data usage per customer is around 68 GB, which is the highest in world, in this contest 5G comes into picture to meet this high demand and satisfy our customers’ requirements for best experience. Q. How does VIVA view Kuwait’s readiness for 5G? A. The Kuwaiti market is characterized by high MBB traffic usage, current monthly data usage per Eng. Mazyad Bin Nasser Al-Harbi customer is around 68 GB, which is the highest Chief Executive Officer in world, in this contest 5G comes into picture to meet this high demand and satisfy our customers’ VIVA Telecom - Kuwait requirements for best experience. 5G technology will be a key enabler of our national ICT market development, 5G fiber like services with customer speeds reaching 100 Megabits per second (Gbps) level will be more than enough to cope with current users consumption of digital services such as HD Video OTTs, augmented/virtual reality, social media etc, but also 5G will enable new services including ultra-high definition multimedia, virtual reality, massive connections, in addition to supporting the infrastructure of smart and safe cities in the near future. 6 MAY 2019 FEATURED SAMENA TRENDS Q. How soon do you predict that major network operators will adopt 5G in the