Exclusive Interview – Khalid Athar
As one of the leading operators in the Middle East, what development strategy has Mobily formulated in the digital transformation era?
For the digital era, which is very important for us, what we care most is about the customer experience. As customer experience is the key factor – we do not just consider this in small projects here and there, it lies at the center of our offerings to our customers end to end. Our digital journey has customer experience at the heart of everything.
Mobily has a wide range of businesses including a focus on transport, enterprise and multiple other verticals. What is the most important aspect of your offering for your core telecom customers?
As of now, they are most concerned about our progress in 5G which is a priority for us also because 5G is the new era creating new revenue streams and creating endless possibilities in terms of solution offerings. Of course, the end users want to have a fast network which is more reliable and has lower latency which will enrich and enhance their digital experience which eventually also leads to newer revenue streams. So, 5G is a very important element in the new telecom ecosystem, which will enable operators to provide more and more services to the customers.
What are some of the challenges that Mobily has encountered in the pursuit of its strategic goals and what has been your approach towards dealing with such challenges?
One of the biggest challenges when it comes to consumer side is the need to create new services that integrate with the customer demand. We have to ensure that customers are able to have the best digital experiences first and secondly, that those experiences are well served through our network.
I want to highlight that in today’s telecom environment, innovation on the network is as important is the network itself. The revenue stream is going down for legacy services on the voice side and on data side you must keep creating new things. Innovation is not just about creating new revenue streams but also about customized solutions for the customers and increase in the efficiency of the network.
On the business, there is a huge demand coming; there are new business cases in mobility, in education, in medical and we are working on these cases ourselves. It will be important to ensure that our infrastructure continues to grow with these new demands in mind.
Recently, the Global Green Energy conservation is becoming a hot topic, and many operators consider low carbon emission reduction while developing their services. How does Mobily see this issue?
This is something that is very important to us here at Mobily and is taken into consideration in our projects and our vision in general which is aligned to the Saudi Vision 2030 headed by the Crown Prince. Even though, Saudi Arabia is an oil producing country, we are very much concerned about the carbon dioxide emissions and we are consciously making efforts to reduce them.
Take for example, our data centers – which is something Mobily is leading in as we have Tier 4 centers. Our data centers are the backbone in the industry however our investment in this business is not just in the infrastructure but is very much considerate of the power consumption. We have made great efforts to ensure highest possible efficiency in terms of power consumption which leads to lower carbon dioxide – and this is something that we are not looking at just from a cost perspective but also as something that we need to do for the society and the environment.
Would you like to tell us a little about who your key partners have been in your 5G rollout?
We have three main partners when it comes to 5G. We have Huawei, Nokia and Ericsson and with them, we have great hope for the future. Many businesses cases are not yet developed, but we know that with such partners, who are the key vendors for the entire industry, we will stay ahead in the journey and we will be able to leverage from the best business cases that can be developed.
What is your 5G offering at the moment? What kind of coverage do you have?
The plan is to have a coverage of 5G everywhere. Currently, we’re covering the main cities with 5G and the main thing on 5G is the fixed wireless. Right now, we are in phase one. Soon, we will have 5G which is on a deeper level with complete dependency on 5G itself. This is when we can enrich offerings with really low latency, something called an almost zero latency concept.
From there on, we will start looking at products and solutions in medical, in education and transport where we have all these ports and “things” connected on private networks.
In fact, private networks will be a big focus as they are the way to go, especially in the industrial area with legacy cables and legacy Wi-Fi where we can alternate this with near zero latency and the complete network can be deployed on 5G which makes everything easy to reshape, easy to change the product line, easy to expand without a major hustle on timeframe.
How would you compare Saudi Arabia’s telecom sector with other markets in the region?
Saudi Arabia invested in 5G ahead of many others or in fact, most others. The main investment came in during 2020, during the pandemic, where many businesses were pulling investment. The main suppliers of telecom were fully injected and with the early vision of 5G, today we have one of the fastest 5G in the region.
This 5G is very important for our market because we see a huge demand for this. The demand is coming from the youth in our country – we have about 65% of the population that is below 30. Therefore, our focus is on a network which caters to a huge demand of high speed, high capacity, and low latency.
What factors will be the major driver of growth for the industry in 2022?
I think that the main growth will come from the business unit considering a few things I have already shared earlier. I believe data centers will also be a key growth factor. This is something Mobily saw early on a long time ago and capitalized on it. We have great data centers and state of the art buildings since 2015 which we keep further innovating on and adding on to. In fact, we were the first ones getting certificates for the tier-3 centers in the kingdom.
2022 will also be a lot about IoT – something that is facing huge demand. Again, we are very targeted in our efforts as now our IoT network is the largest IoT network in the Middle East. Today, we have smart meters connecting around 10 million households. So, wherever there is electricity, we will have Mobily coverage with a narrowband IoT to be connected. This is how important internet has become. It’s something that we saw during COVID-19 that internet is not a luxury anymore. However, we faced no problems in Saudi Arabia because we were investing our networks from long before the pandemic.
We have a very strong fiber network and we have a very strong wireless network and we think that the adaptation will increase in 2022. Many people are still working from home or hybrid and the productivity from homes which is based on networks is increasing which is adding on to the demand on the network and I think this demand will continue to grow in 2022.
