Dubai: As the demand for bandwidth continues to grow very fast in the UAE, thanks due to bandwidth-hungry applications, telco operators are increasing their bandwidth availability to prepare for the future.
“We want to show that our network is ready for faster speeds of 900Mbps. Now it is up to network providers to supply the devices. The move is towards the 5G network infrastructure. By 2020, the telecom industry expects the 5G to be rolled out,” Saleem Al Blooshi, executive vice -president of network development and operations at du said.
When asked what 5G is, he said the industry has not defined the specification yet but the focus is on more bandwidth and higher traffic speed, added that there are multiple standards for the technology
”It is immature today to know what 5G is really about,” he said. “All the companies are working to standardise it and come to a common standard. It is mainly about bandwidth to cope with the traffic growth.”
For example, he said that WhatsApp started off with messaging first, later they moved slowly to voice, limited pictures and videos sizes. Customer behaviour is changing “very fast” and so the need for bandwidth is going to be more and more as days pass by.
“Since enterprises are moving their applications to cloud computing network should be capable, so we are increasing our bandwidth capacity,” he said.
With Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and higher network speeds announced, he said that du is working with partners like Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson, Vodafone and terminal manufacturers.
VoLTE will enable operators to offer high-speed internet browsing or video streaming during a live voice call. The new technologies provide High Definition (HD) voice service and faster call set-up.
He said that Microsoft has announced to support VoLTE during Gitex on its Lumia device. Samsung is working on it. There are devices from some Chinese companies which supports VoLTE.
