Operators battle to be first with Middle East LTE
Mobile operators Etisalat in the UAE and Mobily in Saudi Arabia are vying to become the first LTE operator in the Middle East.
Etisalat is the largest mobile operator is the UAE, commanding 60 per cent of its local market. As one of the major operators in the region the recent launch of an LTE service across most of the major cities in the county can be viewed as a major statement of its intent to stay ahead of the competition.
Etisalat has announced the launch of its 4G LTE service in the UAE.
The LTE-FDD mobile network will cover all major cities in the country in the first deployment phase, with Etisalat promising data download speeds of up to 100 Mbps.
Mobile operators Etisalat in the UAE and Mobily in Saudi Arabia are vying to become the first LTE operator in the Middle East.
Marwan Zawaydeh, chief technology and information officer for UAE carrier Etisalat, is looking to position his firm as the LTE pioneer of the Gulf region. Zawaydeh, who will be presenting a deployment case study at the forthcoming LTE World Summit, speaks to Pamela Weaver about Etisalat’s plans for the technology.
Canadian BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion (RIM) has won a last minute reprieve in the United Arab Emirates, after reaching a mysterious compliance agreement with the local authorities.
Tuesday’s launch of the BlackBerry 6 OS, Research In Motion’s new flagship operating system and accompanying hero device – the Torch – was overshadowed by ongoing privacy concerns over the RIM network in the Middle East and India.
On Monday morning the Telecoms Regulatory Authority for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced that it had ordered local operators to suspend BlackBerry services from October 11, for breach of telecoms regulations.
Perceptions about the Middle East and North Africa countries’ ability to foster e-commerce are increasingly becoming outdated. The pace of development in the last three years has been truly impressive. Operators across the region are investing large sums in getting high-speed, high-capacity and cost effective telecoms networks into the region and the current infrastructure is much more advanced than perhaps they have been given credit for.