 | Issue: | 2010 |
| Article no.: | 4 | |
| Topic: | ‘Future proofing’ your telecoms operations | |
| Author: | Mohammed Zainalabedin | |
| Title: | GM | |
| Organisation: | GM, Zain, Bahrain | |
| PDF size: | 514KB |
About author
Mohammed Zainalabedin is the General Manager of Zain, Bahrain; he has been with Zain Bahrain since its operations started in the Kingdom in 2003. Prior to joining Zain Bahrain, Mr Zainalabedin had a decade of experience in the IT field working for companies such as International Turnkey Systems where he held the position of the core banking group manager in the banking group. Earlier this year, he was named one of the ‘Top 40’ most influential telecoms leaders of the Middle East by the prestigious industry journal, Global Telecoms Business. Mr Zainalabedin holds a BSc Hons in Computer Engineering from King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia.
Article abstract
In Bahrain, the growing use of increasingly sophisticated applications – mobile money, entertainment, social networking, entertainment, advanced business systems etc. – makes it difficult for operators to keep up with the demand for bandwidth. Bahrain’s compact size and well-regulated telecoms sector, though, make it an ideal innovation centre for telecoms companies experimenting with advanced 3G/4G networks and services and for early strategic transition to an all-IP technology that can ‘future-proof’ mobile offerings and let operators add to existing services seamlessly.
Full Article
Talking on your mobile phone? Sending a text message? These obviously still make up a big portion of mobile phone usage in the Kingdom of Bahrain, where telecoms liberalization in 2002 re-shaped the sector. Increasingly, though, the mobile phone is being used as a lifestyle tool, allowing users to both conduct important business transactions and manage their leisure activities. We are working in a world where we often communicate with faceless machines and wireless exchanges. You can pay your utility bills and traffic fines over the phone by accessing Bahrain’s award-winning e-Government portal; you can download movies and music of course and rig a webcam to keep a long-distance check on your storefront or babysitter via MMS. Many banks are linking up with telecom companies to offer 24x7mobile phone banking or even to ping customers when credit card transactions are completed. Telecommunications in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) come with a completely different perspective, than, for example, in Africa. While volume here is not as high as Africa or Asia, the region is hungry for new technology and GCC customers are eager to invest in the latest technology. The benefit of this trend is that GCC telecoms service providers are more willing to bring new technology to their networks. Bahrain’s compact size and well-regulated telecoms sector make it an ideal innovation centre for telecoms companies, leading to many telecom service providers, ranging from mobile telephony operators to broadband service providers, to push the envelope consistently with nation-wide 3G, 3.5G and WiMAX-powered offerings. Bahrain has also shown a remarkable ability to put in place e-governance mechanisms; these have made it imperative for telecoms service providers to ensure that they have the technology ready to offer their customers access to an ever-growing list of uses that they can put their mobile phones to. This hunger for increased broadband capacity to power the expanding use of mobile phones has pushed investment in Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology to the forefront. At US$50 million, it is an expensive investment. We have sought to usher in one of the most extensive technological upgrades in the GCC region to respond to trends in telecommunications usage that will change in the years ahead. The move to LTE will boost the customer experience today – it will enable faster data downloads, an overall enhanced mobile customer experience, improved coverage and capacity and will deliver better products and services in line with the future needs of the sector. The region’s first LTE project which Nokia Siemens Networks is carrying out will enable faster data downloads, an overall enhanced mobile customer experience, improved coverage and capacity and will deliver better products and services in line with the future needs of the sector. LTE will provide data throughputs in excess of 100 Mbps (Megabits per second). Flipping through web pages containing images, flash items, or any other “heavy” components will seem to be instantaneous. If you have emails waiting to be downloaded from your email provider’s server to your PC then that will take a few short seconds. So will be the downloading of music tracks. And with LTE, downloads that take hours today will take minutes in the future. There is another attribute of data connection that LTE significantly improves. This is called latency. Latency is the time taken for the data sent from one end (say a server somewhere in the internet cloud) to start reaching the other end (say an internet user). And whereas a high throughput means that you get large amounts of data per second (i.e. Megabits per second), a short latency means that the response time from you clicking the mouse until you see the effect of that clicking is short. LTE will boast latencies in the region of ten milliseconds, compared to the 3-digit figures of today’s mobile broadband networks. The benefit of such short latency shows in applications such an online gaming whereby a number of people could be sitting at different places – even different continents – and together playing a computer game. Here the short latency will give the players the feeling of being together in one room. These benefits of LTE come from many advances both in the radio network and the IP (internet protocol) network architecture. LTE brings a lot of advances in the radio system, made possible by the advances in recent years in computing power embedded in the radio systems. Thus we have the so-called smart antenna techniques, bringing about high efficiencies in the utilization of the scarce radio spectrum resources, while providing signal coverage in the most difficult situations, such as being indoor or moving at high speeds. Advances in the IP networking means that the architecture is much flatter, leading to the low latency mentioned earlier. Such an advanced all-IP network caters also for the carriage of voice with superior quality, bringing about great efficiencies in the network operation. In terms of standardization, LTE also sets precedence. Until now there have been multiple standards for mobile networks worldwide, from the first generation that appeared in the early 80s, to today’s third generation. Thus we have seen, and continue to see, different non-compatible standards used in North America, Europe, Japan, and other regions of the world. LTE is the standard that all regions in the world will adopt as their fourth generation mobile technology. For the Middle East, Bahrain is the starting point for this to happen. Why now? In a market where competition is getting fiercer, the investment in LTE technology makes sense when set against the growing customer demand for sophisticated mobile telephony and broadband experience. It gives the operator an opportunity to make an early strategic transition to an all-IP, which will have a direct impact on the quality of communications experienced by its customers. As we evolve to a more ‘lifestyle-enabled’ telecoms experience, LTE will give telecoms service providers the capacity to put services first and ride the surge of innovation in the sector. In short, this is the technology that will ‘future-proof’ mobile offerings, allowing us to add layers to the existing portfolio seamlessly.
