Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 02 | Page 42

COUNTRY FOCUS: OMAN THIS NETWORK WILL TRANSFER DATA BETWEEN THESE GOVERNMENT ENTITIES SIGNIFICANTLY AS THIS WOULD SERVE TO UNITE ALL GOVERNMENT DATA IN A UNIFIED NATIONAL DATA CENTRE Oman will be connected to the national broadband infrastructure by 2040. “The government has put a big investment for the upcoming ten years in this sector. With the intention of opening doors for wider communication services in Oman, OBC is currently focusing on the deployment of fibre optics in the main governorates of the Sultanate. Optic fibre deployment plans are already underway in the Governorates of Muscat & Musandam, and soon to be implemented in the Governorate. OBC’s current and upcoming plans for optic fibre deployment will be shared at the FTTH Council MENA Conference,” said Eng. Said Al-Mandhari, CEO of OBC. In September of this year, the Information Technology Authority (ITA), represented by Dr. Salim Sultan Al Ruzaiqi, CEO of ITA, and Oman Broadband Company (OBC) represented by Eng. Said bin Abdullah Al Mantheri, CEO of OBC signed an agreement for the implementation of a private and resilient fibre optic backbone for Oman Government Network (OGN). This agreement will be directly implemented to connect the current 63 governmental entities hosted by OGN providing high speed connectivity and linked to the National Data Centre at ITA, in addition to another backup data centre. “We are pleased to sign the first phase of the high-speed government network with OBC to implement and operate the current active network. The first phase of this implementation will cover 63 HQs for all government organisations in the Muscat region replacing the current lower speeds of OGN. The new network will connect the mentioned HQs with the previous 1GB connectivity and will connect them to the ITA National Data Centre (NDC) with a 10 GB backbone,” stated Dr. Salim Sultan Al Ruzaiqi, CEO of ITA. It is universally agreed among those in the industry that this new service will enable government organisations to enhance the service quality and also enable government organisations to integrate by exchanging data to 42 INTELLIGENTCIO 90% of the Governorate of Muscat and 35% of the other governorates outside Muscat will be covered by optic fibre by 2020 Every building & village across Oman will be connected to the national broadband infrastructure by 2040, says government sources 63 HQs Oman Government Network (OGN) fibre optic backbone will cover for all government organisations in the Muscat region www.intelligentcio.com