With Qatar’s ongoing journey towards implementing the first 5G mobile network and its evident surge in ICT spending, Huawei’s vision has never been more aligned with the Gulf state.
Rapid urbanisation, greenfield projects, national ambition and a lust for building things smart makes Qatar a very busy place right now.
The country is passing through a growth phase as it moves towards 2022 and the hosting of the FIFA World Cup finals.
Within this, both transport and construction – with an emphasis on stadia – are a priority for Qatar, with new blueprints being rolled out across tables each week. But the commercial sector is witnessing increasing investment, too – especially in the realm of digital innovation.
A report from Qatar’s Ministry of Transport and Communications, released recently, suggested that ICT spending in the country’s commercial sector is due to hit $2.8bn by 2019 – almost double its value of $1.9bn in 2015.
Credit must be paid to government entities that account for 83% of the ICT spending in the country.
This goes to show how much reliance Qatari companies will place on ICT providers in the coming years – opening up the market for the tech world.
And the country is ready for it; in 2015, it ranked 27 of 143 on the Networked Readiness Index.
The inevitable increase in competition will result in another sturdy market drive for the ICT sector.
As companies in the commercial sector invest more and more heavily in innovative products and services to meet the demands of today’s customers, the ICT market’s paydays will become ever more frequent.
The sector recorded revenues of QR9bn in 2014, a growth rate of 15.4% year-on-year since 2012.
Huawei has been building its network in Qatar since 2005, and in the last decade has reached many milestones with the help of its partners – both public and private.
As the nation proceeds through this aggressive growth phase, Huawei is committed to partnering with companies in all areas of industry to help drive Qatar’s smart city ambitions, and support its National 2030 vision. This is going to include a lengthy education process for businesses.
The market is going to continue experiencing big changes with regards to spending habits, expectations and infrastructure – and businesses need to figure out exactly how to adjust to manage this evolution.
Huawei has been spending its time in Qatar wisely, building lasting relationships with government entities and partners in order to help drive the digital migration.
Last year, Huawei signed with a tier one value-added partner to offer the firm’s enterprise products across Qatar.
It’s long been a fundamental element of Huawei’s commitment to extend the availability of specialised training and technical knowledge in order to empower its partners to drive better flexibility and efficiency to its customers across the region.
Moreover, its Seeds for the Future programme – which identifies young talents from around the world and teaches them the core skills and trends in the industry – is now on its way to Qatar.
This programme is designed to harvest Qatar’s next generation of industry leaders, and will set it on the path to securing and defining its knowledge economy.
As far as Huawei’s customers are concerned, as Qatar’s smart maturity grows, they will demand more and more flexibility and agility at lower costs – and it was this realisation that has steered Huawei’s policy in the past few years.
However, another core focus has been on research and future innovation – an imperative for sustainable growth in the digital economy.
Huawei has long championed the evolution of 5G networks – particularly across the Middle East where many nations are keen to drive economic diversification by improving their services and offerings.
The company’s investment in R&D continues to increase – specifically when it comes to future-centric technologies. By 2018, Huawei hopes to have invested $600mn in research of 5G.
This isn’t new or unusual – the company invests an average of more than 10 % of its total global revenue into R&D, and maintains 16 R&D centres and 28 joint innovation centres worldwide.
This level of investment can be key for Qatar as its push into digitally enabled services gains weight.
Moreover, as we move closer to the FIFA World Cup in 2022, 5th Generation networks will be an absolute necessity – certainly from a customer perspective.
Fans travelling to games will want to enjoy the benefits of smart stadiums, complete with all encompassing Wi-Fi networks that allow them to better engage with the competition.
Qatar’s “smart nation construction” covers safe city, smart transportation, smart energy, smart education and other facilities, with the main goal of lowering the city’s management cost and improving efficiency using ICT technology.
As the worlds’ leading innovative ICT enterprise, Huawei has built smart city prototype projects in over 60 cities across 20 countries, set up smart city solution partnership with more than 1,100 professional suppliers in subdivision fields, and built an open eSDK platform and open lab for joint innovation and authorisation qualification, possessed over 800 local service/integration partners and over 4,300 channel agents, with matured and multi-tested project operating procedure, implementation experience and complete delivery system.
Huawei’s leading advantage in smart city mainly lies in three aspects: Open co-operation consciousness with government agencies and application suppliers; Years of accumulated experience in leading the ICT solution field; Profound experience accumulated over 60 cities globally.
Broadband, cloud computing, big data and IoT are the distinguish features of communication technology, driving the digital transformation engine in every fields, and improving Qatar’s scheme construction, management operation, liveability level and humanistic care.
Huawei knows that to achieve these goals, no single company will be able to stand alone. The needs and demands that 100bn connections generate will require collaborations reliant on five particular characteristics: real-time response, on-demand services, all-online, DIY and social – we call this approach Open ROADS.
This vision can only be achieved through open co-operation and joint innovation, and Qatar is perfectly poised to take full advantage of this environment.

ICT spending in Qatar’s commercial sector is due to hit $2.8bn by 2019

*Zong Yan is general manager for Huawei Qatar.