e& UAE and Ankabut have renewed their partnership to modernise the UAE’s national research and education network. This collaboration will deploy an AI-ready, high-performance digital foundation to support advanced research, cloud connectivity, and global academic collaboration.
The partnership aims to transform the academic landscape by creating a secure, resilient, and ultra-high-performance digital foundation for the education sector. The initiative is designed to support the exponentially growing demand for artificial intelligence, advanced research, and high-performance computing across universities and research institutions throughout the UAE.
Abdulla Ebrahim Al Ahmed, Chief Government & VVIP Relations Officer, e& UAE, said: “True digital transformation in education requires us to look beyond traditional network solutions. We are proud to serve as the trusted architect of this secure, scalable, and resilient AI-ready foundation. By integrating Ankabut’s educational network with e&’s world-class connectivity and local AI hyperscalers, we are creating a powerful catalyst for home-grown innovation. This private education network will ensure that our academic institutions have sovereign, secure access to the world’s most advanced AI tools and collaborative platforms.”
As AI adoption accelerates across the education sector, academic institutions require far more than traditional commercial internet connectivity. They need a high-capacity network capable of supporting complex AI model training, deep learning inference, and extensive data modelling. The new AI-enabled private education network will operate as a dedicated ‘digital expressway’, helping reduce the impact of network congestion, bandwidth constraints and latency. This infrastructure enables campuses to connect directly with local AI hyperscalers and large-scale cloud environments, helping researchers run intensive workloads and process complex datasets with greater speed, capacity and reliability.
Tarek Jundi, CEO, Ankabut, said: “We are witnessing the next evolution of research. With high-performance computing and data-intensive collaboration becoming central to modern knowledge, we need to move beyond just connecting institutions and become the digital backbone that enables secure and sovereign data research. This collaboration with e& UAE marks Ankabut’s progression in the ecosystem that helps strengthen the country’s capabilities for years to come.”
Crucially, the partnership also extends connectivity to leading international research and education networks. This allows UAE-based academic institutions to collaborate effectively on international research initiatives, using Ankabut’s NREN (National Research and Education Network) for high-performance data exchange. More than just providing dedicated and secure network access between UAE education and research institutions, Ankabut’s NREN now orchestrates connectivity to global partners and UAE cloud service providers.
In alignment with the UAE’s National AI Strategy and digital transformation agenda, this partnership will support AI transformation in the education sector through a future-ready digital infrastructure. Through this, e& UAE and Ankabut are not only modernising campus networks but are also building the sovereign technical framework needed to fuel home-grown innovation and secure the UAE’s position as a global centre for AI, research and innovation.
