In an exclusive interview, Abdullah Al Naamani, director of digital and innovation at Ooredoo Oman, stated the benefits of customers and users in driving digital transformation in Oman, the ICT trends and advantages, as well as the highlights of 2022 at the company.
How will Ooredoo Oman continue to drive digital transformation in the country for the benefit of its business customers and end users?
At Ooredoo, digital transformation is something we are helping to drive in the country and telcos have a big role to play. We have leadership commitment, a clear strategy and access to global digital talents across our OpCos and the Group.
We have adopted an agile mindset and continue to invest in technology, upskilling our workforce as well as digitalizing our business processes to modernize the business. We are a customer-centric organization, which means that each and every one of us is directly or indirectly responsible for providing the ultimate digital customer experience in order to meet the demands and expectations of our customers. And we will continue to incorporate emerging technologies like 5G, artificial intelligence and machine learning, IoT, robotics process automation, big data, cloud computing and cyber security with the promise of upgrading our customers’ world.
From your perspective, which existing ICT trends will impact Ooredoo Oman the most, and what are the core advantages of these?
Just like most of the telecoms in the region, the ICT trends that will impact us in our domain are basically 5G, artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, IoT, robotics process automation, cloud computing and cybersecurity. As we witness an explosion in connected devices, there is a need to provide fast and reliable connectivity, which 5G will do. And to process and store the huge amount of data that is being generated, big data will play a role. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will enable us to process the huge volumes of data from the connected devices to derive insights, which will help us to do predictive maintenance, enhance our operations, improve the digital experience of our customers and also personalize our product and service offerings that we give to them.
Cloud will provide the elasticity in computing and storage that is required to process this data, and in some cases, edge computing where there is a specific use case that requires low latency as well as the data being closer to the source.
With all of this, it is very important to have adequate security measures to protect this ecosystem from cybercrimes, and that’s where cybersecurity plays a role.
What are the company highlights you can share for 2022? How do you foresee the growth of Ooredoo Oman in the upcoming years?
For 2022, the highlights would be the expansion of our 5G and other network technology. In fact, our network overall covers over 99% of the population, and we have started to work on three data centers, which is a cornerstone to providing the required infrastructure and fueling the digital economy as part of Oman’s Vision 2040.
In addition to this, we have revamped our digital products portfolio to meet the ever-growing demands of our customers.
On the growth aspect, we see ICT as being a key part of our business; one which will help to support all the start-ups and SMEs, which are an important part of the future of Oman’s economy.
The second aspect is fintech, where we expect to see a lot of growth, and finally, 5G, as fast connectivity is ultimately what will enable economic digitalization.