The Wi-Fi-enabled Internet or mobile data is an essential utility requirement, just like water and electricity. The almost-nationwide power outage on Monday demonstrated how normal life could come to a standstill, including cutting-off people from each other.
The Internet is also equally important to keep the CCTVs running all the time and for all Artificial Intelligence (AI) purposes, especially with the advent of the 5G network.
In the Sultanate of Oman, Omantel has covered the populated areas in the governorates of Muscat, Al Batinah South and Al Batinah North with real 5G speeds. Speaking to the Observer, customers said the quality of home Internet has improved with the expansion of the fiber to the home network. However, they are still expensive, and the speed is questionable, especially with the older 4G networks.
“We are not using the Internet for watching movies and games, but purely for a livelihood. I am fully into e-commerce, and even a small delay in transactions due to technical problems can lead to losses amounting to thousands of rials,” said Basher, who has been guiding the online businesses in the region, including the Sultanate of Oman, for a decade now.
Having an efficient Internet system is equally important from the safety and security point of view because of the dependence on technology-based surveillance and tracking.
“From my experience about using the Internet in various countries, I can easily say that no market is perfect, but certainly the Sultanate of Oman needs a faster and affordable product, which will be easily achievable as the government embarks on its smart Oman programmes,” said an ex-senior IT specialist who was involved with various IT projects.
The recent Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) regulation to monitor the quality of telecommunication services, including data speed for each fixed broadband service package (wired and wireless) and details of the quality of communications services, packages and offers, is an important step in the right direction.
The UK-based mobile analytics company, Opensignal, said the 5G is the most important wireless connectivity technology across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) due to its faster download speed and easy availability.
The 5G peak download speed is 743 Mbps in UAE, 713.4 Mbps in Qatar, 663.7 Mbps in Kuwait, 635.9 in Saudi Arabia, 503.5 in the Sultanate of Oman, and 469.4 in Bahrain.
On the 5G download speed, UAE has 316.8 Mbps, Qatar 278.5 Mbps, and 263.4 Mbps in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia 234.4, Bahrain 187 and the Sultanate of Oman 185.8.
As for the upload speed, Qatar has 30.5, UAE 27.6, Kuwait 24.6, Saudi Arabia 23.7, Bahrain 15.3, and the Sultanate of Oman 13.5.
The 5G peak download speed was over twice as fast as the average download speed in all six GCC markets. In Saudi Arabia and the Sultanate of Oman, the difference was closer to three times as fast — the ratio between 5G peak and average speeds was 2.7 times. Kuwait is top for 5G Video Experience and is the only market where users experienced an excellent experience (75 or above).
5G subscriptions in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region are expected to reach 263 million by 2026, according to research by Nokia.
In GCC countries, 5G technology will dominate, with the subscriber base reaching 64 per cent of the total and data traffic likely to surpass 70 per cent by 2026, according to the study.
“Globally, the pace of 5G network rollouts has surpassed 4G/LTE networks. Two years after the first LTE launch there were only 25 million subscriptions across 60 networks, while two years after the first 5G launch, 340 million subscriptions were registered across 155 networks. Similarly, in MEA, our MEA Broadband Index Report finds 40 per cent year-on-year growth in 4G data traffic but a huge 350 per cent year-on-year growth in 5G data traffic in 2021 alone.
@vinot_nair
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