Qatar moves into Premier League of connected economies

There’s a lot of telecoms and IT infrastructure investment going on in Qatar, both as part of its long-term development plans and in preparation for the World Cup 2022.
The country rose 20 places in the Home Internet Speed Test Global Index (2019), for example. This was largely due to Ooredoo’s ongoing investment in FTTP, which has seen average broadband speeds in the country rise to 70Mbit/s, putting it ahead of countries such as the UK.
Ooredoo is not only deploying FTTP but rolling out IoT services to help businesses in Qatar monitor water and energy consumption. Ooredoo Industrial Metering is a cloud-based solution that includes all the hardware, connectivity, applications and services required by enterprises. The application is built on Ooredoo’s IoT platform, and provides a graphical dashboard with real-time analytics, and alerts for critical events.
Meanwhile Vodafone Qatar has rolled out Huawei’s 5G Mobile Wi-Fi Pro, which can convert 5G signals to provide fast WiFi, enabling customers to benefit from 5G speeds even if their existing phones or devices don’t yet support 5G. The device is suitable for personal, office, business, travel and outdoor use, and can resolve problems with traditional mobile phone hotspots such as battery drainage, overheating, unstable signals and limited connections.
2020 has also seen the launch of a new internet exchange in Doha – the first in the country. It will enable more efficient exchange of data by local networks, improving latency, security and access to digital content. Other internet exchange points are expected to go live in 2020.
Cloud offerings are set to get a major boost with Microsoft announcing (December 2019) that it will establish a new cloud data centre region in Qatar to deliver cloud services and expand its global cloud infrastructure.
Qatar is also leading innovation in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)’s multimillion dollar mobile app market, which according to Statista rose 11% in 2019 to USD920 million. “Qatar is proving to be a leader in mobile app innovation and user experience, especially as the market grows and apps become a key pillar of organisations’ strategic plans,” commented VMware’s Marc Frentzel at a roundtable during the recent VMware CIO Exchange Doha.