Integrated Telecom Company Ltd. (ITC), a leader in Information and Communication Technology, signed an agreement with Nokia to perform experimental trials to develop and measure 5G applications.
ITC is willing to contribute in a strategic vision, to develop 5G in favor of the new advanced broadband. The MoU contains adding new technologies to ITC's towers such as LTE 4.5G, 4.9G and the fixed 5G.
Eng. Ghassan Itani, ITC CEO, said: "We at ITC are working on fulfilling the goals of one of the Kingdom Vision 2030's axes which states that the KSA is working on increasing the high-speed internet coverage in all of its regions and improving the quality of connectivity. For that, we are in the middle of signing several MoUs with Nokia and other companies with big history in launching advanced technologies in telecom towers".
Itani added: "We welcome and embrace CITC's vision of the 5G technology, and we look forward with great optimism to launching this technology in KSA". He assured that with its frequencies in the ranges of 3500MHz, 2600MHz and 26GHz and its continuous field experiments aiming at improving the network capabilities to receive the expected huge data flow, ITC is capable of providing an exceptional internet usage experience through speeds that exceed 1 GB/second to get the best of the unique services and applications.
5G is providing very high speeds which are 30 to 50 times faster than the speeds provided by the existing 4G. 5G applications and services are not only limited to communication and entertainment, but are also targeting new services such as: Virtual Reality, Enhanced Reality, Health Care, Remote Surgery and much more. The 5G technology will be the main enabling factor for the future communication technologies such as: M2M, IoT and Smart City services.
ITC, through a partnership with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, is working on covering more than 640,000 households with fiber optic broadband services. These experiments are part of ITC's plan of developing communication services through FTTx and wireless networks.