GEC NEWS WIREInfiNet Wireless outlined its vision for the future of next generation wireless technologies, at the tenth edition of its annual Partners Conference.
Held in Budapest, Hungary, the conference was attended by close to 100 partners and end customers, from 26 different countries — with a majority from the Middle East & Africa (MEA) region, including the UAE, Saudi, Oman, Lebanon, Egypt, South Africa and Kenya. The two-day conference focused primarily on InfiNet’s future strategies, with the management team stressing the importance of aligning its global focus with the growing demand for reliable and higher capacity wireless infrastructures.
In his keynote address, Kamal Mokrani, Global Vice President at InfiNet Wireless, highlighted the company’s strong growth over the previous financial year. “In spite of a slow-down in mature markets like Europe, we had another double-digit year of growth, with top line revenues up by 13%. The Middle East & Africa region continues to be a strategic market for us and a driver for this growth, contributing 27% to our annual revenue, second only to the Russia CIS region. In terms of sectors, we continue to see tremendous demand for our market-leading solutions from service providers. Mada in Kuwait is a shining example of one such service provider that continues to invest heavily in our technology, year-over-year, to ensure that it can provide its subscribers and demanding business users with high-bandwidth and reliable connectivity,” said Kamal.
Given the large service provider install base, 5G was a topic that dominated the conference, with a lot of partners wanting to understand the impact this would have on the sector. Discussing some of the trends in the wireless internet service provider (WISP) market and how the company is gearing up for the 5G era, Andrey Koynov, CTO at InfiNet Wireless said, “5G will trigger a transformation in the market with connections speeds expected to reach 100Mbps and latency expected to drop to 4ms. That being said, fixed 5G does pose several challenges, specifically around the range of coverage. As a consequence, WISPs are going to have to redesign their backhaul network and make a significant investment in infrastructure. At InfiNet, we are responding to these market trends by building a brand-new portfolio of products and technologies, like Quanta 5, that will enable WISPs to thrive in the 5G era.”
Quanta 5 has been designed as an all-in-one package to enable operators of all sizes to quickly deliver high-capacity premium services to their corporate clients, to interconnect their network nodes wherever they are located, or simply to provide internet connectivity to end users. The solution can also be deployed as part of a wide area network to connect remote locations to the main control and operations centres, whether for oil & gas companies as a part of their smart oilfield strategy, or for financial institutions wishing to seamlessly connect all their branches and offer better a customer experience.
As is every year, one of the highlights of the conference is the awards ceremony and this year, partners and customers from the Middle East region took home several of the top honors. Mada (Kuwait) was recognized as the best WISP for 2018, e-Saudi, one of InfiNet’s key partners in Saudi, was commended for having executed the most strategic project and individuals from Hussam Technology Company in Oman and EuroTel in Saudi were recognized for their outstanding contributions in supporting InfiNet’s customers and helping the company grow its business in the region.
“This year in Budapest we have felt a real excitement for what’s happening in terms of delivering higher levels of performance from our solutions, and continuously pushing the boundaries of physics to achieve even more — in less spectrum and at a lower cost — to our end users,” said Dmitry Okorokov, CEO at InfiNet Wireless. “Our annual conference is the highlight of our financial year. It is not only an important forum for us to meet with our valued partners, but it is also a golden opportunity for us to listen to current market trends and dynamics and get their feedback on our latest solutions, like Quanta 5. This enables us to fine tune our value proposition and also identify new ways to deliver ground-breaking solutions,” he concluded.
