The UAE is building the world's first 5G-A country.
Text | "Communication Industry Daily" all-media reporter Dang Bowen Dubai reported that on May 13, the much-watched SAMENA Leaders Summit Middle East and Central Asia 5G-A special session was held in Dubai, and at the summit site, TDRA, SAMENA, e&UAE, du, GSMA and WBBA and other organizations jointly launched the "UAE Launches National 5G-A Network Construction" release ceremony, marking the official launch of the world's first 5G-A country. At a time when the R18 standard is about to be frozen, the active deployment of the UAE has attracted wide attention from the industry and set a model for the advanced development of mobile communications.
The launch ceremony of "UAE Launches National 5G-A Network Construction" was held. The summit invited many leading operators in the Middle East to share the rapid rollout of new 5G-A services, new packages and new terminals, and at the same time, many vivid success stories also demonstrated the development of the UAE from 5G-A City to 5G-A Coutry, further demonstrating the huge technical potential and social value of 5G-A technology.
One Step Ahead: Exploring and Benefiting from the Middle East
At present, 5G is accelerating around the world, and from the perspective of industrial development, 5G is considered to be the key to the upgrading of personal consumption experience and the digital and intelligent transformation of industries, and the world's major economies have clearly required 5G as an important part of long-term industrial development. In the deployment of 5G, the Middle East is the first group of explorers and beneficiaries. In recent years, the Middle East has vigorously promoted the country's industrial diversification and economic transformation, and the UAE implemented the "National Development Strategy for the Next 50 Years" in 2021. According to BCG (Boston Consulting Group), the Middle East has the highest game penetration rate in the world, and it is expected that the number of live game viewers will exceed 200 million by 2025, while new businesses such as the metaverse and XR will also receive key investments at the national level. At the same time, as the 5G "golden track" in the Middle East, 5G FWA has also achieved great success in the Middle East, with a total of 1.8 million FWA users developed in GCC (Gulf Arab States) countries, surpassing the development speed of local optical fiber, and the rapid development of services has driven the FWA business revenue of benchmark operators in the region to increase by more than 20% year-on-year, becoming a new engine for operators' revenue. In order to enhance the power of the 5G engine and promote the continuous improvement of 5G network supply capabilities and scenario service capabilities, 3GPP officially defined the evolution of 5G technology as 5G-A in April 2021 and decided that its standard will be defined from R18. Today, as the next evolution of 5G technology, 5G-A has made significant progress in standard development, network construction, and terminal equipment. Facing the construction of 5G-A, the Middle East still attaches great importance to and is one step ahead of others, and has made many achievements in 2023. In March 2023, etisalat by e& completed the deployment of the first 5G SA network in the Middle East and North Africa region. In August 2023, the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced the successful verification of the 10Gbps rate of the 5G-A pilot project conducted in collaboration with two telecom operators in the country (etisalat by e&d and du), marking a solid step towards widespread adoption of the 10 Gigabit IoT.
The UAE is launching the world's first 5G-A nation. At present, operators in the Middle East have carried out a lot of 5G-A technical cooperation in various fields such as oil and gas, ports, medical care, finance, and electric power, and it is the solid technology accumulation and scenario innovation that have enabled the UAE to achieve the "leap" from 5G-A City to 5G-ACouter and realize the first release of 5G-A countries in the world.
"Leapfrogging" 5G-ACoutlet from 5G-A City
The high-speed and stable 5G-A network will bring people a faster and smarter connection experience, whether it is daily communication, entertainment and leisure, 5G-A will greatly enrich people's lives. For operators, 5G-A is not only an important opportunity to improve network performance and user experience, but also a key platform for exploring new business models and achieving business growth. In order for the UAE to truly realize the "leap" from 5G-A City to 5G-ACoutry, from the details of the launch ceremony, we found clues for the construction of 5G-A in the UAE. First, high standards. The most significant feature of the UAE 5G-A plan is the use of more than 300MHz of bandwidth for 5G communications, which will greatly increase the speed and capacity of data transmission. The second is excellent experience. 5G-A not only focuses on the improvement of technology, but also pays more attention to the optimization of user experience. Offering a network experience of up to 10Gbps starting at 5Gbps, users will be able to enjoy unprecedented internet connection speeds, which is a huge leap forward for high-bandwidth applications such as HD video streaming, large file downloads, real-time gaming, and more. The third is large-scale. The implementation of the UAE's 5G-A plan is not limited to cities or small areas of specific areas, but is being deployed on a national scale. This means that more users will be able to benefit from the high-speed network services brought by 5G-A, further promoting the digitalization and intelligence of cities. Fourth, fast-paced. For the construction of 5G-A, the UAE has also formulated a very clear "roadmap" in terms of deployment progress. Fifth, in-depth development. The UAE's goal for 5G-A is not only to provide faster network services, but also to continuously upgrade the network experience and move towards 10 Gigabit speeds to meet the vision of a higher demand for network communications in the future of society and individuals. At the summit, TDRA, the UAE's communications regulator, and major telecom operators delivered important speeches, kicking off the innovative deployment of 5G-A. Bocar BA, CEO and Director of SAMENA's Telecommunications Committee, said that the 5G-A era is coming, driven by the latest technologies from relevant manufacturers. 5G-A will be commercially available in the coming months, and some of the members of the SAMENA Telecommunications Committee are the first operators in the world to commercialize 5G. Today, they are also expected to continue to lead the global 5G-A deployment. Eng. Saif Bin Ghelaita, Executive Director of Technology Development at the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) in the Emirates, said that the commercialization of 5G-A networks is imminent as both standards and ecosystems are ready. TDRA plans to develop a national plan for 5G-A networks and is committed to promoting the planning and allocation of rich spectrum to further promote the development of mobile networks. In the symphony of 5G-A, collaboration resonates in harmony. "The e&UAE subnet has made a breakthrough in the field of 5G-A, with a network speed of 30Gbps." Khalid Murshed, CTIO of e&UAE, said that 5G-A is the foundation for moving towards 6G, and looking ahead, e&UAE will rely on our customers and partners to jointly introduce and continue to develop 5G-A and maintain our leadership position in the 5G-A field. Karim Benkirane, CCO of Du, said that through the construction of 5G networks, we have found many application scenarios and maintained a leading market position, so we believe that 5G-A will be able to provide higher speeds to meet better application scenarios and user life. In fact, the deployment of 5G-A is not a cluster, and a clear idea and clear planning are required. For the interpretation of the new capabilities of 5G-A, the world's leading 5G-A ecosystem and content manufacturers also gathered at the scene to discuss and promote the implementation of mobile phones, CPE, glasses-free 3D and other ecosystems.
Focus on the development of 5G-A:
"Walking in the same direction" of the new industrial ecology
At present, the global 5G industry is still in the middle of network construction, and the industry generally believes that 6G technology will not be applied until at least 2030. Therefore, the next 3~5 years will be a critical period for the development of 5G-A, whether in terms of business scenarios, network technology, industrial processes, and deployment rhythms. The smooth flow of wireless communication networks is no different from the smooth flow of roads, which is an indispensable infrastructure for modern urban life, and the hotel for this conference is located in Atlantis, Dubai, which is located on the artificial island of Palm Island, covering an area of 113 acres. Although the hotel is located on an artificial island in the sea, it is very convenient to get around, with direct access to the hotel by the Dubai Metro, and as an international city, Dubai is not only efficient and convenient in terms of road transportation, but now it is also at the forefront of the world in wireless communication networks. In the reporter's view, for the United Arab Emirates, the value of 5G has been gradually released in the personal, family, industry and other markets, and how to make 5G-A replicate the success of 5G is the focus of this summit. The UAE's announcement to build a 5G-A country is a "mutual journey" for global operators, communication equipment vendors, and application providers, which means that we are entering a new 5G-A era, with higher standards, better experience, wider coverage, and faster deployment rhythms coming to us.
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