Data Consult has been sharing much of its expertise in technology from all its aspects in the past editions of Telecom Review Leaders’ Summit and this year wasn’t much different. After being present during the whole day and moderating the panel on the role of FTTx deployment in accelerating digital transformation and smart cities, Mr. Marc Nader, COO of Data Consult accorded to the team of Telecom Review a get a quick talk on what distinguished this Summit edition and an overview about the company.
Being active in the Middle East and Africa region can you tell us more about the wide services that Data Consult provides?
Data consult is a system integrator present in the region, headquartered in Lebanon but it also has offices in Syria, in Jordan, and in Saudi Arabia. As a system integrator, we cover a big spectrum of technologies and our core focus is the core networking for service providers. But we also focus on cyber security, collaboration technologies, and the Internet of Things. This is from a technology perspective, from a services perspective, we provide obviously professional services, but very recently in the past 3 years we have been migrating our engagement to managed services, meaning that we operate in technology infrastructure on behalf of the customers.
You’re assisting to Telecom Review Leaders’ Summit in its 12th edition. How important it is to such summit to be held in Lebanon?
I think it is the most important summit organized in Lebanon, it is very impressive, and I’m very impressed by the capability to gather the major players in the community and we are very proud to be part of this success by sponsoring the event, and to attend with my colleagues to be part of this successful event.
You moderated the panel on the role of fiber deployment and accelerating digital transformation and smart cities. What are your thoughts on the main points discussed in this panel?
There were some very interesting points discussed. Obviously the first lesson is that fiber is a necessity, so a strong infrastructure is a necessity to build on top all the digital services that we already talked about. Second very interesting point was about building a software layer into virtualized services which enables the operators to address multiple markets and multiple applications at the same time. That was very interesting. Finally, I would like to mention the feedback given during the panel about a very interesting topic right now which is the demarcation of a service provider, which requires providing high speed internet connectivity with low latency but inside the house it is the responsibility of the end users to transport the internet to the devices. What will happen there? Will the battle be won by the operator? Will it be won by independent providers? Or will the likes of amazon and google win this battle knowing that they recently acquired home Wi-Fi equipment, both of them have home Wi-Fi offering?
