- CTO says no change in Capex and have accelerated the rollout after easing of Covid-19-related restrictions.
- CTO sees delay in Expo 2020 as an opportunity to enhance customer experience and to increase the footprint of 5G.
- Telco sees more 5G use cases and more matured emerging technologies by second half of next year.
Dubai: UAE-based telecom operator du is aiming to cover 30 per cent of the populated areas of the Emirate with 5G network by the end of this year.
Saleem Alblooshi, Chief Technology Officer at Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company, the parent company of du, said that there is no change in Capex and they have accelerated the rollout of 5G after easing of Covid-19-related restrictions.
“One of the challenges we faced during Covid-19 was it stopped the movement of our resources due to lockdown. Now, we are back to normal and hopes to have nationwide 5G coverage by 2024/2025 timeframe,” he said.
The telecom operator started preparing for the 5G in 2016 and successfully launched commercially in May 2019.
However, Alblooshi said that the availability of handsets and the ecosystem is gradually improving and more new 5G handsets are launching.
Furthermore, he said that the current 5G network play is mainly for high-speed mobile broadband, while the low-latency and massive-machine-type communications will be available later in 2021.
The current use cases for high-speed are gaming, streaming and fixed wireless access (FWA).
During the lockdown, Alblooshi said that remote healthcare, online learning and work-from-home initiatives benefitted from FWA as there was a sudden shift in traffic from the normal hotspots and business sectors to residential areas.
“With the non-standalone (NSA) rollout, we were able to scale our network and our application layer for streaming traffic,” he said.
Use cases still being worked out
NSA means beaming 5G over the existing 4G infrastructure while standalone (SA) means beaming 5G over the dedicated spectrum and infrastructure. Technically, he said that all the components for 5G are available but the business models are still being worked out.
“When 4G was launched, there was a requirement from the end-user for video applications. When a consumer moved from 3G to 4G, there was a total shift in experience. From 4G to 5G, we expect new use cases to be developed to use the 5G capabilities,” he said.
With the non-standalone (NSA) rollout of 5G, he said that only high-speed is available in the country and “we were able to scale our network and our application layer for streaming traffic such as Netflix and video communication tools.”
Because the network is NSA, the latency offered currently in the 5G space, even though better than 4G networks, still does not meet the low-Latency requirements expected by the 5G SA planned by end of 2021.
Industry experts said that the emergence of truly innovative enterprise 5G use cases and major improvements to the standalone 5G technology will happen with the availability of release 16 and 17 standards by 3GPP.
The 3GPP releases 16 and 17 of 5G New Radio include both extensions to existing features as well as features that address new verticals and deployment scenarios and they are expected in 2021.
“Covid-19 and the lockdown have proven the capabilities and reliabilities of the telecom operators in enabling digital transformation and will change a lot of situations for operators as well as for the society. We [telecom operators] are at the core of digital transformation,” Alblooshi said.
He sees the delay in Expo 2020 as an opportunity for them to enhance customer experience and to increase the footprint of 5G.
“By the second half of 2021, we will have more 5G use cases and more emerging technologies will become more matured,” he said.
With the telecom operators across the globe looking to open source technologies (Open RAN) in 5G to bring innovation and cut costs, du does not want to be left behind.
“We are doing pilots with Open RAN and working with the stakeholders. Virtualisation of the networks (edge and access) is part of our business and it is continuing. In 2021, we will have some O-RAN capabilities on the network,” he said.