Iraqi Operators Trying to bring 4G/LTE to the Masses

 

Iraq continues to face a number of political and economic challenges, though increasing civil stability has made it easier for mobile and fixed-line operators to rebuild telecom services and infrastructure damaged during the last few years. The government was minded to extend the licenses held by the MNOs for an additional three years to compensate for the chaos and destruction caused between 2014 and 2017 when Islamic State held sway in many areas of the country. However, this plan was scuppered by opposition among some politicians, who asserted that the market needed more competition rather than extensions of existing licenses.

The three major MNOs are Zain Iraq, Asiacell, and Korek Telecom, which together control over 90% of the mobile market. The operators have struggled to develop LTE services, partly because of issues related to damaged infrastructure but also partly due to wrangles with the government and regulator concerning the conditions of their licences. With the availability of LTE services being very low, there is little change for 5G to be available in the short term. In the meantime, most services are still based on GSM and 3G, except in the Kurdish region where LTE is more widely available.

In the most recent Open Signal report on mobile network experience of Iraqi users, Asiacell wins the lion’s share of awards, winning both speed awards (Download Speed Experience, Upload Speed Experience), all three of the experiential awards — but sharing Games Experience with Zain — and all of the Coverage awards (Availability, 4G Availability and 4G Coverage Experience. On the other hand, Zain picked up both Consistency awards — Excellent Consistent Quality and Core Consistent Quality. Zain also places second in almost all of the award categories that Asiacell wins outright, with the only exception being Availability where it had to settle for third place behind Korek. Korek does not claim any awards this time — either solely or jointly — but placed second in Availability and both Consistency categories.

Asiacell describe themselves as leading the change with their nationwide fast, reliable, and secure 4G+ data speed coupled with award-winning coverage serving more than 16 million customers at 21000 points of sales and outlets throughout the country thanks to their extended advanced network of 7200 LTE sites. 

Asiacell in August 2021 signed a five-year deal with Nokia to upgrade its microwave network to address growing capacity demands and provide reliable, low-latency connectivity. Under the agreement, the Finnish vendor will replace or modernise legacy equipment, deploying around 3,000 network links across the country. Nokia will supply products from its ‘Wavence’ microwave packet radio portfolio, which it claims will improve cost efficiency and performance, adding that its ultra-broadband transceivers will enable Asiacell to provide ‘fibre-like’ connectivity in areas where fibre cannot be deployed.

Commenting on the deal, Asiacel CEO Amer Sunna was quoted as saying: ‘We are pleased to extend our partnership with Nokia by trusting them with yet another project. Improving network performance and enhancing the end-user experience has always been our top priority and having Nokia as a strategic partner is helping us achieve this. By leveraging Nokia’s global scale, we look forward to building a future-proof network that will help us meet the growing mobile traffic demand in Iraq.’

Korek Telecom proclaims themselves the fastest growing mobile operator in Iraq, offering the largest and most reliable mobile network. Their network covers the entire country and its cutting edge technology ensures they match the best network quality with best in class services. Serving the 18 provinces of Iraq, Korek offers a comprehensive range of wireless communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users.

Zain Iraq works to provide the best and most modern telecommunications services to the Iraqi customers and to provide exclusive and innovative offers to its subscribers, specifically after launch 4.5G+ services as the first telecom company in all parts of Iraq through a cooperation with its global technology partners certified for the latest technologies and communication solutions

Zain Iraq’s vision for the year 2022 is centered on creating partnerships with the youth, providing them with products and services that can help them communicate with the world.

Zain Iraq’s 2021 revenue reached USD 769 million, and EBITDA amounted to USD 312 million, reflecting an EBITDA margin of 41%. Net profit reached USD 42 million for the period. The operator’s customer base increased by 2% to reach 16.4 million customers. It should be noted that the Iraqi dinar devaluation also impacted Zain Iraq’s revenue by USD 172 million for the year.

Zain has launched a virtual 5G-ready network in Iraq, under the name Oodi, with US-based digital commerce company Matrixx Software. Zain, based in Kuwait, says that Oodi uses out-of-the-box software capabilities to provide Iraqi customers with complete flexibility, transparency and ease-of-use.

Ali Al-Zahid, CEO of Zain Iraq, said: “Our number one priority is to provide our customers with the best and most advanced services.” According to Google Translate, “oodi” means “friendly”.

Al-Zahid added: “Delivering upon those promises requires forging partnerships with forward-thinking companies that can make the future of mobile services and customer experience a reality.”

Zain said customers can create their own plan, and can see account balances, services and spending using the software.

Related Posts:

• Operator Watch Blog - Iraq: Efforts at Recovery 

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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• Operator Watch Blog: Statistics from Hajj 2019 (1440 H)
• Operator Watch Blog: Three Middle East Operators launch 'World's First' 5G Networks
• Operator Watch Blog - Saudi Arabia: Innovation and Loss

Iraq: Efforts at Recovery

The political unrest, civil war and violence in Iraq has battered the telecommunications sector and created a very challenging environment for mobile operators.  The unstable economy combined with a decrease in consumer spending – along with the destruction of telecoms infrastructure; has resulted in declining mobile subscriber rates and revenues.


However the Iraqi telecom market made a recovery starting in 2016, and is forecast to reach 34 million subscribers by 2017, exceeding its 2014 pre-Daesh level, according to GlobalData.

The three mobile network operators which hold national licences are Zain Iraq, Asiacell and Korek Telecom.

Zain is the largest mobile phone operator in Kuwait but also has operations in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Sudan and manages a unit in Morocco. Zain Iraq is the largest mobile operator in Iraq by subscribers that amount to 13.7 million by end of 2017. The company is headquartered in Baghdad and covers 97% of the Iraqi population nationally. 3G services were first launched by Zain in 2015, followed by the other mobile operators, all using the 2100 MHz band. LTE services have been deployed in northern Iraq in the 1800 MHz band by Alcatel-Lucent and Regional Telecom.

A deal has been made with Nokia who will modernize and expand Zain Iraq's 3G and 2G networks with a special focus on the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf, to support the expected increase in data and voice traffic during Zeyara/pilgrimage as millions of people converge on the region.

Zain Iraq has also been instrumental in rebuilding the network infrastructure and ensuring that the newly liberated regions of Anbar and Mosul receive the best data coverage in terms of 3G.

Korek Telecom: Korek, in which Orange has a stake, started operating in 2000, earlier than any other operator in Iraq. It has had an Iraq-wide licence since 2007 and its network is nationwide was reported as of January 2016 to employ about 2,500 people, to have deployed 3,500 towers and to be serving 7 million subscribers, giving it just over 20% of an estimated national Iraqi subscriptions base of about 34 million and showing a roughly doubled market share since 2011. Korek has some advantages, i.e. a relatively secure base in Kurdistan, where it has been reported to have a 70% share, and a good relationship with the local government, which now has an assured income from its 17% share of national oil revenue. Through further market share gains, Iraqi national growth, diversification into markets like banking and social stabilisation, as well as the lack of fixed infrastructure in Iraq, it is possible that Korek could double in size in the next five years. 

Asiacell claims nearly 12.5 million customers with a network that covers 99.06% of the Iraqi population. Asiacell was the first mobile telecommunications provider in Iraq to achieve nationwide coverage, offering its services across all of Iraq’s 19 governorates including the national capital Baghdad and all other major Iraqi cities. 

Asiacell is also claims to be the best internet provider with its 3.9G data services, offering the best network coverage in the entire of Iraq since January 2015.

Future challenges development: 

Despite the challenges there is high international interest in the Iraqi market with its potential to recover economically pinned on its large oil and natural gas reserves. Iraq offers much potential for telecoms infrastructure development with many under-served areas requiring better coverage and/or reconstruction. There will also be opportunities in developing both 3G and 4G deployment, with early signs that mobile data revenues are already increasing on the back of existing 3G networks.

Prior to the more recent unrest 4G LTE had been deployed in some areas of Iraq and there was also a progressive fibre optic network underway across parts of the country. While it is unknown how widespread the damage to this infrastructure has been, the country is still moving forward with the Ministry of Communications (MoC) recently launching a Fibre-to-The-Home project. This will see an initial 90,000 lines deployed across selected governates.

Overall the current security situation is severely and negatively impacting telecommunications development in Iraq. However, there are positive signs for a future of improvement, stability and reconstruction.