The moderator of the panel discussion entitled “Opportunities of the 5G fixed wireless access”, Amer Mdanat, general manager (KSA), NXN, kicked off the conversation with general questions about the Zain KSA’s 5G journey and the partnership between the operator and Nokia.
When asked about the value that Zain KSA is adding to the ICT sector in Saudi Arabia, Abdulrahman bin Hamad AlMufadda, CTO, Zain KSA said, “We are transforming from a traditional telco operator to a digital service provider of choice with the aim of better serving our customers in a digitally connected world. Including our efforts in offering the best Customer experience journey which we regard as the competitive edge we can offer to customers, empowered by a rich and strong 5G network infrastructure we’ve built over the year - recently adding 5G FWA solutions to enable a full digital experience.
Zain KSA and Nokia have partnered on 5G in 2018 but their partnership goes well before that year.
“We value our partnership with Zain KSA which started off with the provision of voice and data services with GSM, 4G, 4G LTE, and now with 5G. Our engagement with Zain in terms of 5G started in 2018. We have been able to offer 5G fixed wireless access to our customers in the Kingdom thanks to Nokia’s engineering knowledge and Zain’s expertise in the Kingdom”, said Ali Jitawi, customer business team head Zain, Nokia.
NXN’s general manager in KSA, Amer Mdanat then asked Zain KSA’s CTO about their vision in relation to 5G and the progress the operator has reached thus far in its deployment.
“The early adoption of 5G allowed us to add new services to our 5G portfolio and becoming a pioneering name in this field, where people now associate Zain KSA with 5G, and 5G with Zain KSA. In addition to our vision of being the Kingdom’s operator of choice, which the early adoption of 5G supported us greatly towards this endeavor and positioned us as a regional leader,” he said.
“We’ve introduced 5G services in all Saudis 13 administrative regions, and in 50 cities across the Kingdom, enabled by 4,700 towers which was paid off by regional and international recognitions; in fact, we won last month three Telecom Review Excellence Awards for the “best 5G user growth,” “best cloud provider,” and “best 5G infrastructure deployment.” Also, Ookla’s Speedtest award for fastest fixed internet in 2020. In addition, most recently, OpenSignal latest report on KSA where it showed that Zain KSA won 3 major 5G awards (5G Availability, 5G Download Speed, and Download Speed Experience - 5G Users), Zain KSA CTO added.