Reports and Coverage

Smart city innovators NXN (formerly NexGen Group) have won the prestigious 'Technology and Smart Technology' award at the 2018 International Business Excellence Awards.

Ten years ago, in April 2008, renowned San Diego-based chipset maker Qualcomm Incorporated announced its expansion into the Middle East and Africa. The ambitious city of Dubai was chosen as Qualcomm's regional hub, where an office was opened in Dubai Internet City (DIC) Free Trade Zone to serve the company's business interests. Ten years on, Telecom Review reflects on Qualcomm's role in influencing new technologies in the region.

EOH International and wasl Asset Management Group are leading UAE digital innovation with real-time visitor experiences, Internet of Things-connected fleets, and blockchain-backed leases, industry experts announced today.

Bahrain's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along with Batelco and Avaya, has transformed the ministry's communications and collaboration capabilities, with a strategic ICT implementation to connect all ministry employees around the world. The ministry worked closely with Avaya to transform its citizen services by integrating and digitalizing its communications and collaboration capabilities through a two-phased project.

Only 1 percent of CIOs indicated any kind of blockchain adoption within their organizations, and only 8 percent of CIOs were in short-term planning or active experimentation with blockchain, according to Gartner's 2018 CIO Survey. Furthermore, 77 percent of CIOs surveyed said their organization has no interest in the technology and/or no action planned to investigate or develop it.

Youth in the Middle East and North Africa expect the Fourth Industrial Revolution to significantly impact their lives, while many are comfortable living in a future where robots exist alongside humans, according to the World Economic Forum's Global Shaper Survey 2017. The Middle East is embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution - a movement that is expected to add over $266 billion to the Saudi economy.

Data protection has made the headlines following the recent Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal which revealed that the personal data of millions of people was harvested from Facebook and shared with the political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica. The scandal coincided with the announcement of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union after four years of preparation and negotiations. What is GDPR exactly and what impact will it have in Europe and internationally?

A number of leading financial institutions have expressed fears that cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin could play a potentially disruptive role in the world's financial sector.

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has launched a campaign aiming at the development of the content of the official portal of the UAE Government (Government.ae). The campaign started in the first week of May and is open to all sections of the public, government entities and private sector establishments.

The issue of regulating and legalizing ride-sharing services in Egypt was raised in the last couple of months when an Egyptian court ordered the suspension of such services in March after a group of taxi drivers claimed that they were illegally using private cars as taxis.