Telecom services market in Qatar is set to generate $2.8 billion in service revenue by 2020 against a forecast of $2.3 billion in 2015 with an annual compound growth rate of 3.6 percent — driven by operators’ investment in next generation networks, said Pyramid Research.

The mobile penetration rate in Qatar is set to increase to 191 percent by year-end 2020, one of the highest rates in the world. Average per capita spending on telecommunications services now stands at over US$1,000 per year.

“Alongside similar markets such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Qatar is on its way to becoming a digital society supported by smart city initiatives,” said Houda Bostanji, senior analyst at Pyramid Research.

Telecom operators Ooredoo and Vodafone have invested to offer the highest speeds and the best quality of service to mobile subscribers. LTE-A deployments through carrier aggregation have yielded downlink speeds of 150-225Mbps.

Telecom operators will improve their efficiency by upgrading OSS and BSS with new cloud solutions offered by major vendors including Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson. Enterprises will explore IT solutions such as cloud computing, hosting solutions, M2M and big data analytics.

Baburajan K
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