NEWS
Report finds investment in
telcos paid dividends
report from the Oxford Business
A Group has found investments in
telecommunications have paid dividends.
The group’s new ICT-focused COVID-19
Response Report has found the sustained
investments in Saudi Arabia’s digital
infrastructure have played a key part
in helping the country cope with the
spread of the Coronavirus and keep the
Kingdom’s economic diversification
plans on track.
The global research and advisory
company’s report gives details of the
measures implemented by the country’s
telecoms sector, led by stc, which
ensured Business Continuity throughout
lockdown, facilitating the implementation
of seamless work-from-home and
remote education practices, alongside
the implementation of digital health
initiatives. With its focus on the telecoms
sector, the report provides wide-ranging
coverage of the digital infrastructure
upgrades introduced in 2019, which have
taken KSA’s mobile Internet speeds up
to 10th fastest in the world and enabled
stc to accommodate the huge increase
in demand fuelled by Saudis migrating
online during lockdown.
It also charts the shift towards digital
commerce and remote payments which
accelerated during lockdown, buoyed by
the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority’s
decisions to raise the maximum allowed
recharge limit for electronic wallets to
SAR 20,000 per month.
As a result, stcPay – the country’s largest
e-wallet – witnessed 30% growth in
revenues in Q1 2020 compared to the
corresponding period the previous year.
Stc uses Nokia
PSE-3 to
address soaring
regional 5G
traffic
Stc has used Nokia’s PSE-3 chipset with
Probabilistic Constellation Shaping (PCS)
technology to conduct the Middle East and
Africa’s first 200G long-haul transmission
and 300G regional reach field trial. Once
deployed, end-users will experience superior
network performance, and stc will be able to
better address the surge in video, cloud and
5G traffic.
Stc trialled Nokia’s PSE-3 towards enhancing
the efficiency of its Dense Wavelength
Division Multiplexing (DWDM) long-haul
network to reduce complexity and provide
better services to its subscribers. The PSE-3
is capable of helping stc increase bandwidth
efficiency on its long-haul network by
exploiting 200G channels between Riyadh
and Jeddah via diverse routes. Similarly,
300G channels were demonstrated on
a regional network between Khobar and
Riyadh. This approach allows operators to
provide a superior network experience while
raising the available bandwidth per user.
Nokia services ensured the seamless and
timely execution of the trial with stc.
Nokia’s PSE-3 is the first coherent digital
signal processor to implement PCS, a
technology pioneered by Nokia Bell Labs
that helps extract the maximum capacity
theoretically possible over an optical channel.
Nokia’s PSE-3 helps provide unprecedented
spectral efficiency, maximises the
performance and capacity of every link in the
optical network and enables 400G for metro
distances. It leads to much improved network
performance and significantly brings down
operational complexity.
Stc and Nokia celebrate the successful trial
www.intelligentcio.com
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