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Demand for Mobile Broadbond Means Continues to Rise

Speaking to Khaleej Times, Noel Kirkaldy, Director for Wireless Broadband Motorola Middle East, Africa and Pakistan said, “As Motorola, we believe that pent up demand for mobile broadband means will continue to grow. In the region, we are at a lower level of broadband penetration to other similar markets, and this will help to offset any pull back due to the current financial situation.”

Regarding the increase in demand for broadband data usages about 6 to 14 times, he said, “The statistic comes from H3UK. However, this trend is symptomatic of what we see from many operators in the MENA region as well, as consumers increasingly demand access to the Internet and data applications on the move.”

On the wide gap between demand and revenue, he said the recent increase in demand for mobile broadband data access over the past year 18 months has been brought about by new applications that were never previously expected in the industry such as YouTube, Facebook etc.

For operators, the key to profitably delivering mobile broadband services is to efficiently manage the cost of their operations (OPEX) as well as deploying the most cost effective technology — whether that’s WiMAX in a Greenfield situation or migration to 3G and LTE for the mobile operators.

About the slashing of prices for the service, he said, “At the moment we are working from a relatively low base. At this stage of the market development our operator customers are keen to meet demands from their customers to ensure they reduce churn and increase the average revenue per users. As they grow and build their customer base it enables operators to launch more innovative data applications.”

Regarding VOIP, which is not allowed in the UAE, he suggested that countries outside of UAE, such as Bahrain; it had a significant effect on the competitiveness of telecom market.

· aneela@khaleejtimes.com