By Peter Alagos/Business Reporter
Ooredoo seeks to finish saturating the country with 4G+ services and complete the 100% penetration of fibre optic technology in strategic areas of Qatar by end-2015.
On the sidelines of a press conference, Ooredoo new chief business officer Sheikh Nasser bin Hamad al-Thani told Gulf Times that 4G+ network was now available in major areas such as Al Rayyan, Al Wakrah, and Al Gharafa, as well as in Education City and the West Bay area.
“The technology is still pending in some highways along the northern and southern parts of Qatar but our goal is to provide the entire country with 4G+ services,” Sheikh Nasser said.
Asked what the company sought to accomplish this year, Sheikh Nasser said Ooredoo aimed to complete the 100% penetration of fibre optic technology in the country.
In May last year, Ooredoo complemented its mobile broadband reach by providing fibre optic connections to more than 100,000 homes in Qatar and launched the 'Business Fibre' in Qatar, Indonesia, Oman, and Tunisia.
Sheikh Nasser’s statement came after Ooredoo launched Qatar’s first 4G+ network and broke Internet record speeds more than a month during the recently-held ITU World Telecom 2014.
At the conference opening, chief operating officer Waleed Mohamed al-Sayed said Ooredoo achieved 4.1Gbps over TDD-FDD LTE allowing users to download a full-length 5GB high-definition (HD) movie in some 11 seconds while simultaneously uploading a five-minute 30MB video clip in less than a second.
“Qatar is now a very well-connected country and maybe among the first countries in the world in the broadband penetration to launch the 4G+ services that boosts mobile Internet speeds from 100Mbps to 256Mbps,” al-Sayed had earlier said.
Sheikh Nasser also said Ooredoo was in constant talks with Samsung, Huawei, and Apple for the manufacture of smart devices that could carry 4G+ services.
“Our challenge to mobile phone manufacturers is to keep up with the technology that is now available in the market because not many smart devices are capable of using 4G+,” Sheikh Nasser noted.
To address this need, Ooredoo has launched the Samsung Alpha, Huawei Ascend Mate 7, and Huawei E5786 Mi-Fi, which are now available in Ooredoo shops.
Asked how soon Ooredoo could offer its customers the much-anticipated 5G network, Sheikh Nasser said the technology “would probably be available before 2020.”
“Although it seems that Ooredoo can offer the technology earlier than 2020 but the difficulty that we’re currently facing is the slow pace of manufacturers in providing the market with faster devices,” he explained.
Sheikh Nasser added, “As an enabler, we do not have any problems in providing the latest trends. It is the manufacturers who are pulling us back because their devices cannot keep up with the technology available in the market today.”
