By Pratap John/Chief Business Reporter

Ooredoo plans to provide ultra-fast Internet speed for homes across Qatar from early 2016 under its world-scale ‘Supernet’, which gives customers greater speeds and wider coverage.
“We are now studying Internet speeds between 500Mbps and 1Gbps; so we are planning to launch a super high speed,” Ooredoo Qatar CEO Waleed al-Sayed said in an interview with Gulf Times on Monday.
Asked when the ultra-fast Internet speed can be attained by homes across the country, al-Sayed, “This will be in the first quarter of 2016.”
On whether the ultra-fast Internet speed would come at a price, the CEO said, “Every time we do a higher speed, we upgrade the speed for the current prices. But then, we will introduce super high speed at different charges.”
“I am revealing the news for the first time- very soon we are going to announce a much higher speed to the houses through our fibre network.”
Al-Sayed said, “I think Qatar deserves more than this. Our network enhancement will come under the package of Supernet.”
He said Ooredoo’s fibre optic cable network would be sufficient to provide the planned ultra-fast Internet speed on fixed broadband.
“Our existing fibre can take us to whatever speed we need. You need only buy the additional equipment to push the speed on the fibre,” al-Sayed said.
Fibre optic cable, used to transmit the new ultra-fast broadband signals, is made of hair-thin glass fibres which transport light along its network. This will allow Ooredoo to bring customers even more robust set of voice, TV, and broadband services.
Al-Sayed said Ooredoo hoped to “pull copper out of our network” by 2017.
“The existing copper network will be replaced once we migrate every single building to the fibre. Our priority, at the moment, is to penetrate the country with fibre optic. And we believe that by end-2016, we will complete reaching the entire country and connecting everyone by fibre.”
Still, copper network provides Internet and voice products to some Ooredoo customers.
On the mobile broadband segment, the Ooredoo Qatar CEO said, “A few months ago, we have done aggregation for three carriers for three frequencies, basically on the mobile. And we reached the mobile data speeds of LTE-Advanced to 375Mbps. And this is going to be implemented nationwide.
“Basically, the only obstacle we have is the lack of frequencies. For this, we are in serious discussions with the Communications Regulatory Authority. And once we have allocated that frequency, then the speed is going to go almost to 375Mbps and we will enhance that speed to go up to 500Mbps.”