Toni Eid, founder of Telecom Review Group, was undoubtedly right when he said: “5G-Advanced has seen remarkable progress in the Middle East.” He was speaking at the recent 18th Telecom Review Leaders’ Summit 2024 in Dubai where he was delivering the opening speech prior to a panel entitled World’s First 5G-A Region Sets Sail.
The backdrop to this event is 5G-Advanced networks moving from testing to commercial deployment – notably in the Middle East. Which is why a panel of industry associations, regulators, operators and vendors were being asked to describe how far 5G-A had come in the region – and where it could be going next.
Moderator Issam Eid, CMO Africa, Levant, KSA & Qatar, Telecom Review Group, asked the panel about the challenges currently within the 5G-Advanced ecosystem. How, he asked, can industry organisations and government agencies overcome these challenges, drive collaboration and foster a more mature industry value chain?
Fayez Abu Awad, Policy Director, MENA, GSMA, warned: “When considering the next stage of evolution of 5G we have to be mindful of the fact that ARPU has been stagnant for quite a while. We need to make sure that we have the use cases monetised properly in 5G-A.”
His answer (and a regular theme of the panel) was cross-industry collaboration. The GSMA is working on opening access to the capabilities of the network – and advocates for an open API approach.
Dr. Khalid Al Awadi, Manager, Broadcasting and Space Services, of UAE regulator TDRA UAE, focused first of all on spectrum utilisation – notably the adoption of new spectrum frequency allocations for IMT or mobile services.
The integration of non-terrestrial networks – a characteristic of 5G-Advanced – is also a challenge. Will more bands be needed?
More important, perhaps, is the future of private 5G. As he said: “We're talking about different industries utilising data communication. We have a big challenge with regards to knowledge and understanding.”
Finally can costs be brought down? Regulators, he suggested, need to focus on a framework for spectrum sharing or RAN sharing.
The operator members of the panel then addressed the question of the current status of 5G-Advanced development – and what influence will 5G-Advanced technology evolution and network deployment will have on the Middle East.
Hasan Alshemeili, Head of Technology Planning of Emirates-based operator du, was able to describe a success story in his market where 5G outdoor coverage is almost universal and 5G-Advanced use cases have been demonstrated, notably band aggregation to achieve extraordinary Gigabit speeds.
du was also the first regional operator to deploy 5G-Advanced over DAS using Huawei LampSite X. 5G-Advanced coverage he said, is now 20% of the nation “and our strategy is to increase our footprint to 40% by next year”.
As for applications, he said that 5G-Advanced will help to accelerate digital transformation by enhancing connectivity across different sectors such as healthcare, manufacturing, transportation (V2X for example) and smart cities.
Dr. Ayman Elnashar, VP of Technology Strategy, Architecture & Innovation, e&, highlighted his market’s achievement: the fastest 5G speeds of any nation globally. He also noted that e& is planning for private 5G thanks to a partnership with oil and gas giant ADNOC to deploy the biggest private network in the world.
Of course 5G-Advanced is still being standardised – with enhancements likely to continue for some while. The recent 3GPP Release 18 will enhance the uplink while Reduced Capability (RedCap) New Radio is helping to expand the NR device ecosystem. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will play increasingly important roles in 5G-Advanced.
Release 19 promises to expand the addressable market for 5G massive IoT. Base station intelligence, energy-saving ambient IoT, improved power consumption for base stations and devices and continuing enhancements to RedCap will help to address sustainability and energy efficiency. Further ahead, Release 20 will address 6G and AI-focused network design.
Stelios Savvides, Chief Technology Officer, Vodafone Oman, agreed that the GCC area is very advanced in 5G-A but asked: What are the use cases and network scenarios that are helping to drive investments?
One answer comes from Oman itself during Salalah’s tourist season. “We've been looking at advanced scheduling, in terms of uplink improvements, to drive throughput and of course some features around sensing interference – how we can drive the network to give a much better experience.”
Segmentation – differentiated quality of services for certain customers – has potential and gaming is an undoubted 5G-A opportunity, he said, as are lowering costs with RedCap and controlling capacity and access on the network, IoT, super low latency, mobile private networks, live feeds and more.
Ramy Boctor, Chief Technology Officer, Vodafone Qatar reminded his audience that “5G SA is a big piece in a bigger puzzle… the nature of traffic is changing now.”
Video on demand, live video streaming, gaming and virtual reality are all video services, but the latency and bandwidth requirements of these are different. What's going to shape 5G demand soon could be more the application than the end user, he argued. Content providers therefore need open APIs.
“It's not a matter of getting a connection to the content it's how you get this connection. How fast do you get it? What's the nature of this bandwidth?” New features are important, he noted, but 5G is also there to provide premium connectivity.
And new features are coming under 5G-Advanced: enhanced connectivity, uplink, download, latency, power efficiency and sustainability. AI-led automation will enhance site creation and network optimisation. Among applications, 5G-Advanced-led healthcare, smart cities, traffic management, safety, and urban management are part of a constantly lengthening list.
Equipment vendors were then asked about the role equipment vendors can play in application and businesses model explorations when collaborating with operators.
Allen Tang, President of ICT Marketing & Solution Sales Dept, Huawei MECA was very upbeat. Joint innovation has been key: terminal manufacturers, operators, regulators and standard organisations working together will accelerate the maturity of the 5G-A ecosystem, he argued.
New spectrum is becoming available. 3CC aggregation is already influencing deployment – and 3CC smartphones are on the way. New technologies like 5QI with SQL technology will allow new business models (like experience monetisation) for operators. And suppliers like Huawei can do a lot of innovation with operators to solve any issues during the journey to mobile AI, and the transformation from NSA to SA architecture.
Khalid Al Awadi, TDRA, added: “The most important issue that we need to take into consideration to adopt and progress 5G implementation is the collaboration of different stakeholders in the industry.”
Talking about 5G-A monetisation, Zoran Lazarevic, Chief Technology Officer, Ericsson MEA, asked how we can connect every killer application with each and every operator globally. How is it going to be maintained and, where necessary, upgraded? What about contract agreements and monetisation? Ericsson and some of the biggest operator globally are trying to address this with a global network API platform to offer connectivity to developers.
One-size fits all networks may not work with 5G-Advanced capabilities like slicing, low latency and performance-based business models, he suggested. Developing the applications to manage this means collaboration.
Mohamed Samir, VP Middle East Market, Nokia, again noted that 5G-Advanced is an evolution of the promises of 5G, including real-life applications to meet different demands. But while the vendor can supply the technology to enable that, collaboration means different operators can build the right business models to serve different consumers. “It's all about bringing value at the end to the whole ecosystem,” he said.
Fayez Abu Awad of the GSMA added: “We have here representatives of the supply side economic equation. What we're missing is the demand side.”
The modern mobile industry will extend to multiple sectors, and, he said: “We will never be experts in aviation, tourism or government. However, the experts within these sectors need to understand the capabilities that we can offer as an ecosystem and start dreaming of their own applications.” And the GSMA open gateway API initiative can help, supporting standardisation that makes a service, no matter where it’s developed, easily and rapidly deployable on your own network.
Another question for vendors was: Can AI can be leveraged to create synergies with 5G? It certainly supported network performance during the Qatar World Cup but with 5G-Advanced embedding AI functionalities in the OSS system this combination is becoming exponentially more powerful. Indeed, the complexity of 5G-A mobile networks cannot be managed by human beings alone; you have to have support from the AI, gen AI and LLMs.
Allen Tang reminded us of the fundamental importance of building for the cloud, of training to support AI, of ongoing telco-to-techco transformation and of the need to address monetising AI in a way that will enhance the customer experience and allow differentiation.
Dr. Ayman Elnashar, of e& also reminded us of the role of AI in solving network problems via automation, managing performance and energy and more. And collaboration, which will extend to the likes of Azure, AWS and Oracle for help building cloud infrastructure and hosting LLMs. With appropriate alliances, he added, operators can take a lead with AI.
The overall message of the day? Well, this panel revealed many fascinating and varied perspectives on 5G-A its role and future, but there was undoubtedly one clear overall message: collaboration will help 5G-A to fulfil its potential.
