In an exclusive interview with Telecom Review, Khaled Al Suwaidi, Senior Vice President of core Network and platform at e& UAE, elaborated on the company’s efforts to leverage 5G-A in core networks and platform intelligence to enable the integration of AI-backed solutions for its customers.
The 5G Evolution
Since 2018, the overall success of 5G adoption in the Middle East has witnessed a remarkable, technologically driven transformation across industries and businesses. This trend has greatly multiplied the opportunities for CSPs to thrive in an increasingly digital-first service environment. However, for service providers, 5G network performance is vital for providing “differentiated solutions” for its customers in a highly competitive market.
As such, to maintain this momentum, the introduction of 5G-A—the next frontier of 5G technology—in 2024 has been of supreme importance. 5G-A enables 5G systems to reach their fullest potential by supporting downlink speeds of up to 10 Gbps and uplink speeds of 1 Gbps for over 100 billion devices. In an environment where performance and cost optimization play a detrimental role, the capabilities of 5G-A are truly a game-changer.
As connectivity grows, so does the demand for a tailored and seamless customer experience. Connectivity alone is no longer enough to ensure customer satisfaction; it must be paired with advanced, personalized capabilities to meet evolving expectations. This becomes even more critical in the mobile artificial intelligence-generated content (AIGC) era. Higher uplink, downlink speeds, and low latency are essential to support the increased traffic demands and ensure robust performance across all network operations.
Further elaborating on the network development trends supporting future communication needs, Al Suwaidi said, “At e& UAE we are always bringing solutions to the forefront that focuses on bringing the best in customer experience, and this is done by building our network based on the requirements of both consumer and enterprise verticals. We are always evaluating the market to bring the most advanced capabilities to our networks that will support all our customer requirements.
AI-Driven Operations
Based on such requirements, Al Suwaidi summarized the key technologies that will enable the realization of their strategy. He said, “The era of AI has just started for both enterprise and consumer markets. The consumer segment is looking for VR/AR, gaming, and so on. We are deploying a network supporting AI capabilities and low latency for such activities. The enterprise is also looking at AI to enhance its products, and we are trying to provide them with the latest 5G-A, low latency, and high bandwidth for their products and services.
The deployment of a distributed architecture network, including regional, national, and Edge data center structures, can support traffic localization for the Cloud Core network. Maintaining new network components to guarantee the service experience (such as through the NWDAF function) and broader monetization purposes of the network exposure function (NEF) are also critical for efficient and profitable operations.
Moreover, the importance of voice services cannot be overlooked. Increasing the efficiency of voice services—through VoLTE and VoNR- and enabling new voice capabilities through 5G New Calling services will open up new monetization opportunities. It is also essential to guarantee zero packet loss data communication by upgrading the data communication network to 400G/800G pipes for both domestic and international traffic requirements.
Facilitating New Opportunities
Elaborating on how 5G-A can help e& UAE drive new enterprise services and business by ensuring service availability, reliability, agility, and security, Al Suwaidi said, “Enterprises are reliant on the operators for zero trust networks to secure operations and enhance services at the same time looking to build automation capabilities. This requires 5G-A applications to run on very low latency with high bandwidth download and upload speeds. We will continue to work on building 5G-A and AI capabilities for our customers to enable the next generation of solutions for Industry 4.0.”
Moreover, private network deployments (fully dedicated or shared) are gaining momentum in the UAE market. Additionally, 3GPP has supported multiple new types of 5G-LAN and 5G VPN services that e& UAE commercially verified.
Touching upon the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in improving network operational efficiency, Al Suwaidi said, “At e& UAE, we use AI for external as well as internal use. Externally, we are exploring different AI-based services to offer our customers soon while internally, on the engineering side, we are using AI for planning and operations. In planning, we use it for predicting and forecasting traffic and on the operation side, we are using AI to self-heal problems and troubleshoot by using its capabilities to simplify our daily tasks, maintenance, and fault detection.”
Al Suwaidi elaborated on the role of AI in enhancing voice services by emphasizing the integration of a new AI-powered calling platform with 5G-A. He said, “We believe that the AI capability built on the application will help us enrich the existing voice services with translation and call assistant features and, later on, with a virtualized AI assistant for B2C applications.”
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In line with this vision, Huawei provides new AI-embedded services that personalize end users' experiences with intonation features specific to voice services.
5G-A cutting-edge technology holds the potential to establish reliable connections and accelerate speeds, which form the pillars of next-gen connectivity, such as 6G. With a 10x capability, 5G-A’s globally unprecedented speed (reaching 10 Gbps download speeds) will lead to faster data transfer, ushering in a new era of high-quality streaming and seamless cloud services, including improved massive MIMO, accurate timing, reduced capability, mobile extended reality, and more energy-efficient networks. e&, along with Huawei, is constantly unearthing the potential of 5G-A to catalyze an AI-driven, intelligent digital world.
