Through an agreement with Alfanar, the Chinese vendor will initially launch specific solutions in Saudi Arabia
Huawei has inked a partnership with Middle East electrical product manufacturer Alfanar to explore how IoT and 5G technologies can be implemented in the latter’s electrical products.
Under the terms of the deal, the two partners aim to co-create 5G and IoT solution for the Middle East electrical market.
The announcement was made through a Memorandum of Understanding signed on the sidelines of Middle East Electricity, the Middle East power industry’s largest annual trade exhibition, which took place recently in Dubai.
Through this agreement, Alfanar and Huawei will adapt Huawei’s global IoT cloud service to the requirements of the Middle East and launch the service in Saudi Arabia in an initial phase, with the goal of expanding the service to the rest of the region in the short term. The service will help organizations in Saudi Arabia to become more sustainable by developing energy management solutions that enable customers to precisely track and monitor their energy consumption, Huawei said.
The two companies have already completed the integration of NB-IoT chips into Alfanar’s products, such as smart energy monitoring via NB-IoT devices.
“As one of the major players providing electricity infrastructure to Saudi Arabia, we are excited to partner with Huawei and harness the most advanced ICT technologies and integrate them with smart solutions,” said Abdul Salam Almutlaq, chairman of Alfanar. “Emerging IoT and 5G-driven solutions are finally allowing smart services to be deployed on a large scale, and we look forward to spearheading the shift towards building a smarter and greener Kingdom.”
Sun Xiaofeng, VP of the Middle East region and head of Huawei’s Middle East marketing and solution sales department, said that Huawei is “excited to launch this innovative cloud service here in Saudi Arabia, with the hope of soon expanding across the region and even the world. We hope our partnership with alfanar will further strengthen our complete ecosystem of partners, manufacturers, technicians, developers and designers to bring the best 5G and IoT solutions to the Kingdom.”
Earlier this month, Huawei and Saudi Telecom Company (STC) confirmed they have completed what they claim to be the first trial of indoor 5G in the Middle East region.
During the trial in Dammam, STC used 100 megahertz in the 3.5 GHz band on the 5G network, and achieved a peak user downlink throughput of 1.3 Gbps.
STC launched the 5G test using Huawei’s 5G product, which supports both 5G New Radio and LTE.
The trial included verification of 5G technologies and air interface DL peak throughput.
The Arab telco said that the 5G indoor solution is aimed at providing users with a faster user experience, as well as better access to services such as 4K/8K video streaming and AR/VR video game applications.
