Kuwait's Telecom Triumph: A Competitive Race to the 5G Frontier

Kuwait boasts a well-developed telecom infrastructure, particularly in mobile networks and services. The telecom sector plays a vital role in the country's economy, and its significance is expected to grow in the coming years as Kuwait strategically shifts from an oil and gas-dependent economy to one centred on knowledge, ICT, and related services.

Data from GSMA Intelligence shows that there were 7.89 million cellular mobile connections in Kuwait at the start of 2024. However, note that many people around the world make use of more than one mobile connection – for example, they might have one connection for personal use, and another one for work – so it’s not unusual for mobile connection figures to significantly exceed figures for total population.

GSMA Intelligence’s numbers indicate that mobile connections in Kuwait were equivalent to 182.2 percent of the total population in January 2024. The number of mobile connections in Kuwait increased by 279 thousand (+3.7 percent) between the start of 2023 and the start of 2024.

Kuwait has three mobile operators: Ooredoo, Zain and STC. The top two mobile operators, Ooredoo and Zain , accounted for 67.5% share of overall mobile subscriptions in 2023.

In Opensignal's latest analysis of Kuwait’s mobile network experience, Zain has emerged as the leading operator, winning 11 out of 13 awards this time — either jointly or outright. Zain claims outright victory in five categories, including Consistent Quality, Reliability Experience, 5G Download Speed and 5G Video Experience, while Ooredoo continues to lead outright in overall download and upload speeds, while sharing the top spot with Zain in four award categories, including Availability — the proportion of time users spend connected to mobile broadband services — for which all three operators are closely matched.

Ooredoo Kuwait, formerly Wataniya, emerged as the second mobile operator in the country, introducing competition and driving innovation within the sector. Ooredoo provides comprehensive nationwide coverage, with a particularly strong presence in urban areas. The company has invested heavily in its 4G LTE network and is aggressively expanding its 5G infrastructure. They are working with Huawei to move toward the ‘5.5G’, or 5G-Advanced, era by upgrading their core networks across key markets.

Ooredoo is known for its competitive data plans and generally good network quality. Users often praise their data speeds, particularly in urban centres, and their commitment to providing value for money. Ooredoo offers a diverse range of services designed to meet the evolving needs of its customers. 

Zain, originally known as MTC, is a trailblazer in mobile telecommunications in Kuwait and has grown into a leading regional operator with a presence across the Middle East and Africa.

Zain provides comprehensive nationwide coverage, reaching even the most remote areas of Kuwait. The company is a leader in network technology, offering extensive 4G LTE services and rapidly advancing its 5G infrastructure. Renowned for its superior network quality, Zain consistently earns praise for its fast data speeds, clear call quality, and minimal downtime.

Zain Kuwait began deploying 5G networks in 2018. After two years of development, 5G services have entered a phase of rapid growth. The user base continues to expand significantly, with a steady increase in the proportion of 5G traffic. This growth has driven positive revenue and profit gains for the operator.

Zain Kuwait has achieved a 5G subscriber penetration rate of 23%, with the average data usage (DOU) of its 5G users being five times higher than that of its 4G users.

Zain was the first operator to commercialize 5G networks in Kuwait. Zain provided the most extensive 5G coverage and best services owing to its focus on network construction. Zain has reached 100 percent coverage within six months of the commercial launch.

STC Kuwait, formerly Viva, entered the market as the third mobile operator, further intensifying competition and providing consumers with more choices. STC has been rapidly expanding its network, achieving nationwide coverage in a relatively short time. The company has been focusing on deploying 4G LTE and is actively rolling out its 5G network.

The mobile market in Kuwait is fiercely competitive, with Zain, Ooredoo, and STC actively competing for customer loyalty. This competitive landscape benefits consumers, as operators are compelled to offer appealing data plans, innovative services, and ongoing improvements to network quality and coverage. The recent introduction of 5G has heightened the rivalry, with each provider aiming to deliver the fastest speeds and the most advanced mobile experience.

Related Posts: 

• Operator Watch Blog: The Many Firsts of STC Kuwait
• Operator Watch Blog: Kuwait Leading the way on 5G
• Operator Watch Blog: Zain Achieves Goal of 5G Leadership in Middle East & Africa Region
• Operator Watch Blog: VIVA Officially Rebrands to its Parent STC 

The Many Firsts of STC Kuwait

Kuwait is a small country with a small population. Kuwaitis are a minority in their own country with expatriates constituting 70% Of Kuwait's population. With these facts, one could be forgiven if they are completely unaware of how three innovative operators are trying to do some amazing stuff here.

STC Kuwait was called Viva Kuwait and was re-branded last year as we blogged here. In one of our recent posts, we explained the 5G scene in Kuwait. Kuwait has a very competitive landscape with Zain, Ooredoo & STC all vying to be number 1. In their annual report, Zain claims to be the largest operator with 38% subscribers while STC is smallest with 27%. In you look at the picture above, STC claims to have 33% market share, putting all the three operators at par with each other.

Ahmed Al Sharif, General Manager, Network at STC Kuwait recently did Service Provider Keynote at 5G Mena. His talk, embedded below talks about many different innovations STC is doing in Kuwait.

As can be seen in the pictures above, STC was first with nation wide 5G network, first with FDD 8T8R globally and first with CA & VoLTE globally. They have LTE TDD + TDD NR with dual connectivity. Their press release from back in Feb this year provides a lot of details.

stc - Kuwait, a world-class digital leader providing innovative services and platforms to customers enabling the digital transformation in Kuwait, announced today the deployment of an E2E 5G SA solution from Devices to Network and billing with the ability to simultaneously support both 5G Non-Stand Alone (NSA) and 5G Stand Alone (SA).

This initiative builds on stcs partnership and vision to collaborate with Huawei to deliver an agile, cloud native, next generation 5G network that gives stc the ability to introduce new 5G services and experiences with the shortest time to market. With the best 5G wireless coverage by end of 2019, stc - Kuwait updated its wireless network seamlessly to support the SA NSA terminals. stc Kuwaits 5G core network platform is fully designed with containerized micro service architecture making it truly Cloud Native. The hardware of platform is MENA first running on the innovative disruptive next generation ARM V8 architecture powered by Huawei servers which have been specifically designed to meet the needs of the ICT industry especifically as we enter the 5G era.

These ARM based servers are able to leverage their abilities in providing a highly scalable, massively dense, power efficient 5G Core to stc - Kuwait based on the industry standard 5G reference architecture ensuring an open and rich ecosystem.

stc - Kuwait also upgraded its billing system to further support multi-dimensional, multi-scenario charging for consumer, home and corporates. Collaborating with 5G SA technology, stc currently has an end to end network ready with an initial focus on eMBB and is looking forward to the industry to standardize mMTC uRLLC.

stc Kuwait CEO, engineer Maziad Alharbi said, 5G is where the aspiration of the enterprising business and the magical consumer use cases will for the first time become reality. We are able to provide guaranteed SLAs through SA, especially the enhancement in uplink to support our Dedicated Access offering to enterprises. It is now possible with 5G to see stc pave the way for users to experience low latency and massive connections to become a reality in Kuwait.

He added, This is why stc has partnered with Huawei to design and deliver a network that considers the latest trends and utilizes evolutionary learning systems to provide an unmatched user experience. A safe and secure digital ecosystem where industries and consumers can benefit from with services tailored to their needs. We hope to welcome everyone to experience this end to end 5G SA with us.

Here is a keynote video:




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• Operator Watch Blog: VIVA Officially Rebrands to its Parent STC
• Operator Watch Blog: Kuwait Leading the way on 5G

Kuwait Leading the way on 5G

Kuwait has a dynamic telecoms sector with a strong bias towards mobile infrastructure and services.

It has one of the world’s highest mobile penetration levels with 7 million mobile subscriptions in a country of just 4 million people, putting its mobile penetration levels at 168 per cent. With Kuwaiti’s being some of the heaviest consumers of data in the world, this shows the intense demand for capacity on the country’s mobile network infrastructure.

The telecoms sector has also become increasingly important to Kuwait’s economy as the country looks to diversify from its reliance on oil and this is particularly pertinent given the drop in oil prices as a consequence of the COVID-19 outbreak.In 2020 the operators have also demonstrated support during the COVID-19 pandemic through various service offerings and assistance.

There are three major operators of Zain Kuwait, STC (previously VIVA Kuwait) and Ooredoo offer LTE services as well as exploring 5G opportunities. On all operators 2G is on 900 and 1800 MHz; 3G is on 2100 MHz and 4G/LTE is mainly on 1800 MHz (Band 3) and 800 MHz (Band 20).

Kuwait is connected to 7 key international submarine cables. With mobile penetration at high levels, focus has shifted to the mobile data market. All 3 operators have upgraded networks to support faster downlink speeds and are increasingly focused on mobile content and applications.

5G services have become a key focus of the operators which all launched initial 5G networks in 2019. Huawei has formed various partnerships with some of the key operators to further develop 5G in Kuwait.

A full house in #Kuwait. All three mobile operators @ooredookuwait, @VIVAtelecom, and @ZainKuwait now offer #5G services. See: https://t.co/Fo8VPacl3L, https://t.co/Ege0UhK4SH, https://t.co/K8OmzD4rIx

— GSA (@gsacom) June 21, 2019

Zain in Kuwait is the Group's flagship operation, which was established in 1983 called MTC and became the first telecom operator to launch commercial GSM services in the region and now offers 4G/LTE too. It can still maintain the leading position what coverage, speed and subscribers is concerned.

Hisham Allam, Group CTO @Zain, said its operations in Kuwait, where it launched #5G in April, provides nationwide coverage with 969 5G sites. #HWMBBF pic.twitter.com/3RzhBOhcto

— joseph (@Telecomwaring) October 16, 2019

Zain Kuwait has also deployed Enea’s network management solution to ensure that its subscribers do not suffer a degradation of service experience during particularly busty periods, such as long wait times and degraded video quality.They are using Enea Openwave Encrypted Video Manager, which enables transparent classification of encrypted video flows to balance picture and playback video quality in real time according to radio network conditions.

Zain in Kuwait is focusing heavily on HTC 5G Hub for their 5G promotion. Here is their advert #5GAdverts #5GZain https://t.co/CIO8GkJcvA

— 3G4G (@3g4gUK) March 31, 2020

Ooredoo, rebranded from Watanya, and based in Qatar is the 2nd provider in Kuwait. It rivals with Zain and has an equally good coverage and speed in the country. Their innovative product offering enabled them to grow their customer base by 12 percent to 2.6 million at the end of 2019.

Ooredoo has already launched 5G services and devices including a 5G MiFi router in Kuwait in collaboration with Huawei, and said it is accelerating the deployment of more "5G-ready" network stations in Kuwait and Oman.

Ooredoo will leverage Huawei’s world-leading 5G SingleRAN radio solution with advanced Massive MIMO technology, and 5G Cloud Core solution with a convergent platform to achieve a full digital transformation and modernization of its existing mobile networks. The network upgrade will provide customers with the latest 5G technologies and services.



VIVA Kuwait rebranded as STC (Kuwait) is the 3rd operator in the country. STC stands for Saudi Telecom Company and this rebrand was done at the end of 2019 after the Saudis purchased a majority stake in the company.

STC has made switching from 4G to 5G internet packages easier by offering customers 5G service in addition to a 5G router for KD 5 monthly. Customers can stream their favorite shows, play games, surf the web and work remotely at high internet speeds, low latency and instantaneous connectivity using Kuwait’s largest 5G network.

Related Posts:

• Operator Watch Blog: Zain Achieves Goal of 5G Leadership in Middle East & Africa Region
• Operator Watch Blog: VIVA Officially Rebrands to its Parent STC

Zain Achieves Goal of 5G Leadership in Middle East & Africa Region

Zain is a leading mobile voice and data services operator with a commercial footprint in 8 Middle Eastern and African countries with a workforce of over 6,000 providing a comprehensive range of mobile voice and data services to over 49.5 million active individual and business customers as of Dec 31, 2019.

Some observations from its 2019 Annual Report:

Described as their flagship operation Kuwait maintained its market leadership, with its customer base growing 7% during the course of a highly productive year that saw Zain Kuwait invest USD 209 million representing 19% of its revenue in CAPEX during 2019. As the first operator to launch commercial 5G services in the country in June 2019, Zain Kuwait triumphantly rolled out numerous innovative digital services to enterprises and individual customers, attaining the largest market share of 5G customers in Kuwait.

In Saudi Arabia Zain serves 7.6 million customers and has recorded  its highest ever financial results since its establishment. The rollout of the largest commercial 5G network in the region combined with expansion of Fiber to the Home services and the launch of numerous data monetization initiatives were instrumental to its successful turnaround. The operator made significant CAPEX
investments of USD 512 million, representing 23% of its revenues during the year, aimed at
perpetuating the successful digital transformation process underway in the Kingdom.

In Iraq the operator’s focus on customer experience, services expansion across the country and
cost transformation, combined with growth of data and digital revenue and customer loyalty initiatives serve 15.7 million customers. Discussions are ongoing regarding the granting of 4G spectrum, and Zain are hopeful and ready to rollout 4G services to the Iraqi consumers, to help the country's socioeconomic development.

Despite the country’s many socio-economic issues during 2019 including currency devaluation, Zain Sudan continued to perform well. The operation serves the largest customer base in the Group with 15.9 million customers, growing 9% over the year, making it the largest within the Group. It was very pleasing to see Zain Sudan report net profit growth in USD terms during 2019, it is hoped that the currency stabilizes so further growth is reported in USD terms.

The operation in Jordan is maintaining its market leadership serving 3.6 million customers with stable revenues and improved net income that grew 5% during 2019. Zain Jordan invested USD 43 million in CAPEX during 2019 predominantly on its nuclear grade data center, named ‘The Bunker’ as well
as 4G and Fiber to the Home expansion. They are planning the rollout of 5G commercial services, once the spectrum is attained.

 

Zain Group announced that its Zain Drone subsidiary has become the first drone services provider in the region to receive the internationally recognized ISO 9001:2015 certification with respect to its quality management system (QMS).

ISO 9001 specifies requirements for a QMS standard reached by organizations to demonstrate the ability to consistently provide services that meet customer and regulatory requirements, and to create operational efficiencies by aligning and streamlining processes throughout the organization.

The certification is seen as the next step in Zain establishing itself as a leading drone-as-a-service provider in the Middle East region. This is a potentially important new business area for telecommunications providers as, among other opportunities, it could allow them to help organizations to benefit from the Internet of Things (IoT) and, by extension, to leverage 5G rollout for their drone services.

The multiple uses of drones include gathering and assessment of image data, automated stock-taking, and replacing physical inspections with digital inspections, thus reducing human error and, in the case of drone-based oil rig inspections for example, reducing the chance of human injury.



Zain has achieved its goal to be the first operator in the region to launch a commercial 5G network. The operator has a commitment to providing a state-of-the-art network offering advanced mobile services and better customer experience, during 2019 Zain rolled out thousands of 5G sites across Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Bahrain began rolling out 5G sites in December 2019. Zain is keen to benefit from the advantages driven by 5G, including massive machine-to-machine communication (mMTC) and ultra-reliable low latency communications. Zain Group launched 5G services in the 3.5 GHz band, which is part of the global 5G  frequency standard, leveraging advanced technology in Massive MIMO Active Antenna, backhauled capacity of 10Gbps Fiber Optics, and advanced E-band links, supported by virtual core functions to provide high throughput enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) services  to customers.

During 2019, Zain acquired or renewed over 600 MHz of the frequency spectrum across markets in various bands at an acquisition commitment price of nearly USD 300 million. In Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the allocation of these spectrum bands has facilitated the launch of 5G services as is the case with Bahrain that will soon launch 5G. They were the first operator in the region to offer 5G roaming between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia back in November 2019.

Source: Hisham Allam - IEEE 5G-IoT Summit Kuwait

Also in 2019, Zain focused intensively on launching 5G Core (Non-Standalone), which is the first step towards a Next Generation Core. The company started to deploy new solutions that will cater to 5G services in the coming years. Multi-Access Edge Computing is an example of such deployments, where the traffic can now be moved to the edge of the network, closer to the consumer, rather than the earlier approach where it was kept centralized. This will significantly minimize latency, which will better serve future 5G services that require very low latency. Preparations are also ongoing for the Next Generation Core based on Standalone technology, which will also allow network slicing, which will be essential for enterprises.

The adoption of 5G continues to grow at an impressive rate of over 50% month-on-month, Zain operations are able to monitor and improve the quality of service to customers based on data usage patterns, habits and experience to ensure effective network rollout.




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VIVA Officially Rebrands to its Parent STC

Saudi Telecom Company (STC) have  launched a new unified brand in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, representing a strategic shake-up to enhance its presence in the region.

The operator, which previously offered services under the name VIVA Bahrain and VIVA Kuwait, will replace VIVA in both instances with STC.

To mark the rebranding move, the operator announced new offers for its customers for free international roaming, mobile data and free minutes in the three countries.



STC announced the launch of this new branding, according to a statement to the Saudi Stock Exchange website (Tadawul). Launching the new branding for the company and its subsidiaries comes in line with the STC’s strategy for digital transformation and customer experience enrichment.

The company has also changed its Arabic trading name on the Tadawul platform from Al Eitsalat to STC.

STC Group had officially launched commercial 5G services in Saudi Arabia, becoming the Kingdom’s first telecom operator to provide this service across a number of cities in the country.

STC has developed the infrastructure of wireless networks in the Kingdom, extended their range, provided the latest global technologies and accelerated the deployment of 5G networks, which provide the foundation for a range of innovative future applications, including the provision of high-speed mobile internet all over the Kingdom.

VIVA (now STC) and Huawei have also cooperated to advance solutions over 5G to develop IoT solutions and 5G ecosystem in Kuwait.

This agreement is a road methodology promoting synergies and best practices in line with the digital transformation to deliver outstanding services to Viva customers not limited to consumers, home and enterprise, and driving the mission of STC leading the digital lifestyle enabler for its customers. They aim to  launch the nationwide 5G services, that will bring VR, AR, and other ultra-HD video services such as Mobile Video 3.0 to STC customers. They especially intend to accelerate Kuwait’s digital transformation to various industries from oil/gas industry to smart cities to public safety and achieve new business growth for all participating parties.

See also 'How STC is leading the digital revolution in MENA'.

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