Reports and Coverage

By Femi Oshiga, vice president of Service Providers in the Middle East and Africa, CommScope

My colleagues and I recently returned from one of the region’s largest technology events attended by more than 100,000 guests from 100-plus countries. They had the chance to see Sir Tim Berners Lee, the British engineer and scientist who is best known as the inventor of the world wide web, announce a new start up meant to decentralize the internet and restore power to the people in regard to their personal data. I personally find it energizing to know the world’s greatest living genius continues to turn the wheels of innovation 28 years after launching the modern internet.

5G is set to be commercially deployed. Commercial testing from the USA, Canada, Asia and the Middle East is running frequently. Telecom operators and vendors alike are excited about 5G deployment and expect it will bring their businesses up and running again.

Today's connected world is generating huge amounts of data and it is only the beginning. In the near future, technologies that are now at their early adoption and still undergoing development will produce unimaginable amounts of data that will go through the cloud and subsequently the telecommunications infrastructure. Companies will then face challenges mostly related to providing enough bandwidth. Changing the way they handle data is a must.

Member States at ITU's 20th Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-18) held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, completed the election process that resulted in electing the organization's top five management posts, including the UN agency's Secretary General.

Everyday, we are drowned even more into the online world. With the fast development of services, the consumer is making more online purchases and accessing more services all through his mobile. For example, purchasing goods or carrying out a bank operation through your bank's mobile application are both very common actions that have never been easier. Undoubtedly, this is considered as a huge step forward for technology; however, it carries various challenges regarding the security of the consumer's digital identity and the privacy of our personal data online. One of the biggest challenges is developing systems that allow any person to authenticate his/her online identity.

H.E. Eng. Majed Sultan Al Mesmar, the Deputy Director General for Telecommunications Sector at the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has been elected as the Chairman for the International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) Plenipotentiary Conference, which is being held in Dubai.

The adoption of artificial intelligence has been rapidly accelerating across the regions that embraced its impact on industries, economies and lives. The Middle East has seen a significant increase in the technology's adoption and parts of the region have already embraced the new digital age. A study conducted by the International Data Corporation (IDC) estimated that spending on cognitive and artificial intelligence (AI) systems in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region will grow from $37.5 million in 2017 to over $100 million by 2021, representing a growth rate of 32% a year.

The International Telecommunication Union's (ITU's) 20th Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-18) commenced in Dubai with a global call for the world to "act as one" to connect the world's nearly four billion people who remain unconnected to the Internet.

Breakthroughs in deep learning and reinforcement learning are driving a new wave of AI advances. AI applications are now widely deployed across almost all industries, whether through auto-piloting technology, unmanned supermarkets, intelligent voice assistants and more. AI has become a new powerful engine that drives industry digital transformation.

Sofrecom and Comsof will cooperate more closely to plan and design future-proof fiber networks in the MENA region. Telcos can benefit from the combination of Sofrecom's consultancy and analytical experience in this sector and the state-of-the-art fiber planning tool of Comsof, resulting in huge planning and design benefits and less worrying about human-made errors.