Dawiyat owns a 70 000 km long fiber network spread over more than 13 000 cities and villages. What the company mainly does is transform this network into an integrated telecommunications network which communication service providers can leverage.
Dr. Ahmed Sindi, CEO, Dawiyat Integrated Company attended the 13th edition of Telecom Review Leaders’ Summit which was held on December 10th at the Meydan Hotel, Dubai, and took part in the ‘Telecom Leaders’ Panel’. He started off by explaining how Dawiyat is considered the service provider of service providers.
“We are an infrastructure wholesale provider of a neutral network which means we don’t compete with our clients. On the contrary, we offer them differentiated services with competitive prices.
“Dawiyat has a major role in delivering the goals of Vision 2030. In fact, it took part in a great initiative launched by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Saudi Arabia to roll out fiber optics in more than 2 million houses, 745,000 houses of which were covered by Dawiyat with a governmental support of more than SAR 2 billion. To date, Dawiyat has rolled out fiber in 500,000 house where users boast speeds of 1Gb/s.”
In an exclusive interview with Telecom Review, Dr. Ahmed Sindi shed light on the recent project the company is currently working on. Dawiyat is building the largest data center in the Middle East with a power of 24 Megawatt and an area of 8000m2.
“We’re also aiming to build the same data center in Riyadh. Companies as well as governments can use this data center. We expect that it will be operational by end of January 2020”, he added.
What about Dawiyat’s contribution to 5G acceleration, we asked. Dawiyat CEO said that the company is also offering infrastructure sharing services namely in terms of 5G towers whereby it offers towers equipped with power and connected by fiber optics.
“Operators can share the infrastructure to save energy, efforts and costs. So instead of operators having to spend CAPEX, we transform this asset into an OPEX model which can be shared by other operators. It’s a one-stop-shop. So, the operator can focus on the software and client aspects without having to worry about the infrastructure layer.”
Dr. Sindi is confident that fiber is here to stay. 5G along with all the developments currently happening in the ICT and telecommunications fields are set to generate huge amounts of data and operators have already started witnessing spikes in data usage. According to Dawiyat CEO, the latter can only be backhauled with fiber.
Furthermore, Dr. Sindi emphasized the correlation between power and fiber in data centers and how 5G investments go in tandem with infrastructure development.
Saudi Arabia possesses a substantial power grid which is being connected to Egypt, Iraq and the GCC. It comes with substantial fiber connectivity. Being wholly-owned by Saudi Electricity Company (SEC), Dawiyat ensures a highly advanced platform for nurturing and preparing the best breed of local talent, expand economic horizons, optimize energy resources, and enrich all entities through collaborations for creating and introducing innovative solutions.
“Power and fiber are intertwined in any data center. While telecom operators are investing in 5G, infrastructure providers are also keeping up,” he concluded.
