UAE-based telecom operator du is looking to gain more market share against its main rival Etisalat (e&) by launching more specialized consumer and business products. , is looking to build on its success in fixed wireless access (FWA).
Speaking at the Huawei Day 0 Forum on the eve of Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2024 (February 25), DU Chief Commercial Officer Karim Benkiran said: Huawei aims to double its share in the broadband market He praised the company’s success in the UAE, where it doubled its value to 30% and gained 10 points in value. The launch of commercial FWA 5G services has increased its share over the past three years.
Venkiran hailed FWA as a “huge opportunity” for growth for other challenger operators. In the UAE, DU competes with state-owned Etisalat (e&) in a duopoly. The executive said the UAE’s fixed market is “very fiber-heavy”, posing a major challenge for FWA to compete with established and reliable fixed services.
Through market microsegmentation analysis, du found that despite almost 100% fiber penetration in densely populated areas, 20% of households remain unopposed to fiber optic services due to high prices and long-term (2-year) contracts. I discovered that it is not connected.
As 4G FWA customers migrated to 5G, “we started to see our growth accelerate and more adoption of FWA 5G. This helped us grow and increase our market share,” Benkirane said. says.
He emphasized that Du’s growth and repositioning in the broadband sector is due to the enactment of key strategies to advance FWA 5G. The company has made FWA 5G more competitive by lowering the price by 30% compared to the average fixed fiber broadband plan and also targeted small businesses.
The popularity of FWA 5G has created the challenge of high traffic on the network, forcing carriers to find ways to separate FWA traffic, mobile, IoT, and M2M.
Indoor coverage was also a major challenge, as mobile signals are inherently weak at penetrating walls and FWA is a service primarily used indoors.
Advance
Benkiran said that going forward, du will expand from customers’ “basic needs” to more “advanced needs”, predicting that the UAE’s digital economy will double its contribution to the country’s GDP in 2025, as expected. He pointed out that this would be reflected in the future.
First, the company will launch its FWA 5G package aimed at gamers looking for high-speed connectivity with low latency. The carrier then packages the internet product with his Android TV or setup box.
On the enterprise side, du develops specific use cases. Examples Benkirane cited include connected cash machines that allow banks to deploy to remote locations, and RedCap devices that have become more affordable, allowing businesses to reduce functionality. (RedCap) included equipping the device with connectivity.
“We believe that strategies for building infrastructure using 5G-Advanced technology need to be revisited, and that providers need to balance their investments in fiber and 5G-Advanced. Because we believe 5G will provide an experience that is close to or comparable to fiber.
“We are really excited about this journey, even though it has been a short three years (since the launch of FWA 5G). By moving from 5G to 5G SA to 5G-Advanced, we are halfway to 6G. I believe we can do it,” Venkiran said. .
