Telecom Vendors

RIPE NCC successfully organized a roundtable meeting of Arab telecommunications ministries and Arab ICT regulatory bodies recently at the Ritz-Carlton, Manama in Bahrain. The meeting was opened by His Excellency (H.E.) Eng. Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammad, Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications, Kingdom of Bahrain. Axel Pawlik, Managing Director of RIPE NCC, discussed key ways on how to drive in more development and economic growth for the Arab region's internet sector. Additionally, the roundtable addressed the challenges posed by cyberthreats and cybercrime-especially across cyberattacks on governments and internet service providers (ISPs) in the Arab countries.

Alphabet-owned Google announced a definitive agreement with HTC on Sept. 21 under which HTC employees - many of whom are already working with Google to develop Pixel smartphones - will join Google. HTC will receive US$1.1 billion in cash from Google as part of the transaction. Separately, Google will receive a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property.

Huawei, the leading global ICT solutions provider, will showcase its 'platform + ecosystem' portfolio of innovations at GITEX Technology Week 2017, designed to equip Middle East organizations for the next big step on the road to digital transformation.

Trends that will shape the growing demand for fibre across the Middle East and Africa will be the focus for CommScope during GITEX 2017.

Qualcomm has designed and developed breakthrough reference designs  for connected medical-grade biometric patches that will enable a multitude of intelligent care models, from perioperative care (the period around the time of a surgical operation) to assessing the impact of therapeutic interventions.

Nokia is to completely modernize the nationwide LTE network for Ukkoverkot, the Finnish private network operator offering wireless data communications services for infrastructure operators, the industrial IoT market, public safety authorities, the maritime industry and both residents and enterprises in remote areas. The new network will be powered by Nokia's leading LTE solution, which provides superior network quality, capacity, security and reliability required for such specialized use cases.

At HUAWEI CONNECT 2017, Huawei joined hands with Infosys, the leading provider of information technology and business consultation services in the industry, and Wapwag, a provider of smart water affair solutions. Together they released a series of important innovative practices including smart robots/ machine tools and smart water affairs based on open edge computing IoT, accelerating the implementation of industry applications.

Avaya announced the opening of its new office in Bahrain as part of its strategy to support Bahrain's digital transformation efforts and meet growing demand for next-generation communication and collaboration solutions. The expansion furthers Avaya's commitment to investing in local talent while enabling businesses of all sizes to evolve as Bahrain moves towards being a digital economy.

Qualcomm Snapdragon Mobile Platforms support the world's first commercial smartphone to feature Gigabit LTE, the company announced on Sept. 21. Qualcomm technology powers Taiwanese company ASUS's ZenFone 4 Pro smartphone with gigabit connectivity and multi-gigabit Wi-Fi, delivering an ultra-fast virtually seamless gigabit experience.

Deutsche Telekom, in collaboration with Huawei, went live with Europe’s first 5G connection on Sept. 14, based on the latest 3GPP standard. The operator’s commercial 5G network in central Berlin provides over 2Gbps and low latency of 3 milliseconds over a 3.7GHz spectrum link.