From pioneering performance testing during the early broadband days, to advancing 5G and QoE-focused solutions, Hamdy Farid, SVP of Product at Ookla, discusses the company’s innovative technologies, their impact on the Middle East region, and key predictions for the future of connectivity with Telecom Review.
MNOs, ISPs, governments, regulators, and enterprises rely on Ookla for reliable connectivity information and solutions. How do you maintain this reputation?
Ookla has been in business for over 17 years. We have been working on perfecting the science of performance testing over the years, starting from the early days of broadband, all the way to Wi-Fi 6, 5G, fiber, and 5G-Advanced.
Our mission at Ookla is simple, and it drives everything we do: better data, better insights, and better outcomes. This is why Ookla is the preferred data and insight provider for telecommunications operators, regulatory bodies, trade bodies, analysts, non-profits, government and regulatory bodies, journalists, and other connected industries worldwide.
Better Data: With over 11 million consumer-initiated tests conducted daily on Speedtest, and an even larger volume of background tests, the integration of crowdsourced data and benchmark drive tests provides enhanced insights. This includes improved metrics on Quality of Service (QoS), Quality of Experience (QoE), and service disruption details. We employ a robust statistical sampling approach to eliminate bias and ensure data precision. In simple terms, we make sure our measurements accurately represent the real-world consumer experience.
Better Insights: We empower our customers to explore data and gain deeper insights into network performance, service quality, and subscriber behavior, providing them with a comprehensive 360-degree view of their operations.
Better Outcomes: We shift the focus from merely monitoring performance KPIs to defining target outcomes—such as reducing churn or enhancing streaming services—and creating a clear roadmap to achieve those goals.
Can you elaborate on the technology that is being used during product development at Ookla? How have these technologies, and their implementation, changed in 2024?
Being an engineer by trade, I can tell you that we are living in the peak of innovation. At Ookla, we are taking advantage of these technologies at-scale. Through innovation and cutting-edge technology, we are able to fulfill our mission of driving better connectivity outcomes for all.
Naturally, everything runs on a cloud environment, which enables several data storage options, effective parallel processing, and data streaming capabilities. It also provides practically unlimited scalability and capacity.
But in Ookla’s case, we have tons of raw data, and because of this large data volume, traditional data warehousing or data lake approaches are not sufficient. Instead, we have selected a modern lakehouse architecture. It enables us to have large data repositories in connection with modern processing, advancing business intelligence and data science capabilities in the same place.
Additionally, we have adopted a medallion architecture, allowing us to build multiple pipelines with outputs tailored to specific end-user personas, such as marketing, network planning, and sales.
Hence, our lakehouse/medallion architecture allows us to flexibly insert all kinds of business - logic and ML serves as a key tool to discover discrepancies within the data, spot anomalies, and create predictive models or optimization. So instead of providing ‘just data’, we focus on findings, predictions, insights, and recommendations. GenAI and LLMs are very important tools in our toolbox.
GenAI and LLMs are very important tools in our toolbox. We have used our extensive performance, network, and service data products to apply RAG processes on a large language model [LLM]. The RAG process extends the already powerful LLMs to Ookla-specific domains, allowing us to converse with the data and provide clear text answers to complex technical and business questions. A great example is Downdetector’s Situation Report, which provides the user with a situation-aware analysis of the service availability.
In the Middle East region, which products from Ookla have proven to be the most beneficial this year?
Ookla has a comprehensive portfolio, which we offer to a wide range of customers.
Speedtest Insights, which is probably the most popular product in the region, played a pivotal role in supporting nearly all service providers and regulators in executing the region's ambitious 5G rollout plans. While many are familiar with the Speedtest app on their favorite devices, Speedtest Insights serves as the analytical powerhouse, helping service providers and regulators gain a deeper understanding of network performance, coverage, customer churn, and more.
Our Ekahau product was also popular with large enterprises looking to plan and optimize their W-Fi. We have seen a strong uptake in the tourism industry, such as Red Sea Global as well as some of the large hotel chains and airports in the region.
Downdetector, the undisputed leader in real-time problem & outage monitoring, has been the go-to place to check if your favorite online service is up and running or down. We had great success with digital service providers, who are focusing more and more on customer engagement.
As the connectivity market continues to evolve quickly with each passing year, what are some key trends Ookla anticipates in 2025 and beyond, and how is the company preparing for these changes?
Let’s start with the 5G, fiber, and the speed race. I expect to see more and more deployments and upgrades of the infrastructure to achieve the highest speed physically possible. This will be further augmented with a sizable investment in CDN and public cloud to be able to host all applications and bring the content closer to the end user.
Early on in 2024, we recognized the trend that measuring speed alone is no longer enough; that is why we’re adopting a broader measurement methodology that factors in QoE to better meet evolving consumer and business demands.
Secondly, I can see the competition between private wireless, Wi-Fi, and 5G network slicing heating up as these technologies continue to compete over the enterprise business. We have seen early signs in the announcement of almost all equipment vendors and service integrators. As I mentioned earlier, Ookla's portfolio addresses the needs of multiple segments’ needs. We have been investing heavily in planning and optimization solutions—and we have done that for multi-technology networks spanning private wireless as well as Wi-Fi.
My third prediction focuses on the end user. I believe operators will increasingly compete on overall customer experience, not just speed, which is now a given. They will also offer a wider range of digital services and will use end-to-end quality of experience (QoE) as a key differentiator, including exceptional customer care. The true successful operators and service providers in the next battle will be those who can predict churn, minimize it, and ultimately prevent it altogether, redirecting their efforts toward attracting subscribers from competitors.
At Ookla, we are well-prepared to support service providers on this journey. We’ve developed highly effective churn prediction models and are significantly investing in our contextual offer engine to help providers extend their reach and retain customers.
So, there you have it, my predictions for 2025: the rise of 5G and fiber, the growing importance of content in the QoE equation, the competition between private wireless and Wi-Fi, and, finally, solving the churn prediction challenge.
Watch the Full Interview: Why Ookla Remains the Trusted Partner for Connectivity Solutions Worldwide
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