The seriousness of Saudi Arabia’s focus on enhancing the digital economic growth to be among the top 20 countries by 2030 was reiterated by Bassam Al-Bassam, Deputy minister of Telecom & Digital Infrastructure at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MICT).
He said that the country’s quest to become a leading digital society was at the heart of Vision 2030.
The minister was speaking at the GTI Summit 2021 as part of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Shanghai 2021.
He said that Saudi Arabia was keen to benefit from the leading global experience, and cooperate with all competent authorities to adopt and apply more 5G applications, cloud computing and Internet of things (IoT) to various sectors, including education, health, oil and gas.
He felt that this will provide more incentives for business development and future growth opportunities.
The Kingdom invested over $15 billion to cooperate with the private sector on digital infrastructure initiatives, which enhanced response to increasing demand for networks, he added.
Currently, Saudi Arabia ranks among the world’s top 5 countries in the 5G performance and among the G20 leading countries on the level of spectrum allocation. Saudi Arabia’s investments contributed to raising the 5G network coverage to 45 percent across the Kingdom, said Al-Bassam.
The GTI Summit 2021, themed “5G in the Moment’” gathered global information and communications technology (ICT) experts to discuss opportunities for mobile operators, vendors, and vertical industry partners to leverage, innovate, and overcome the challenges of the 5G commercialization.