Organized by Terrapinn and held at The Ritz-Carlton in Dubai from May 24-25, 2022, Telecoms World Middle East brought together regional and global operators as well as industry leaders to discuss the future of the telecom industry in the region. Key topics included virtualization, 5G, the Internet of Everything, cloud-native networks, and giga-speed infrastructure. Etisalat UAE CEO Masood M. Sharif Mahamood, Zain Group CEO Andrew Hanna, and Omantel VP of wholesale Sohail Qadir were among the notable speakers at the two-day event.
In addition to hosting educational sessions and offering networking opportunities to key players in the industry, Telecoms World Middle East featured an awards ceremony to honor the best-performing operators and companies across multiple categories. The following is a look at three major winners.
1. Zain – Best Telco Operator
Launched in Kuwait in 1983, Zain is a regional pioneer in mobile telecommunications with operations in seven countries in the Middle East and Africa. It has more than 50 million customers and employs over 7,500 people. It earned the most coveted prize, Best Telco Operator, at the 2022 Telecoms World Middle East Awards. This was bestowed to the operator by a panel of judges selected by Terrapinn.
Zain, which also won Best Brand for Telecom at the Telecom Review Summit Excellence Awards in December 2021, earned the latest honor in large part due to the success of its value-creative “4Sight” strategy. This has entailed large investments in 4G, 5G, and fiber network upgrades as well as talent development and digital innovation, including the development of Zain Esports, ZainCash, Zain Global Connect, and the Dizlee API platform. These and other efforts improved Zain’s Brand Finance Middle East brand valuation by 9.6 percent year-over-year to more than $2.4 billion.
ZainTech, another one of the operator’s newly created innovative digital programs, received the Best Digital Service honor at the Telecoms World Middle East Awards. A key component in the operator’s core telecom business, ZainTech provides a range of products and services to help business and government clients initiate or improve digital transformation.
“The successful implementation of our 4Sight strategy is creating value for all stakeholders and fulfilling our brand promise of unlocking opportunities for customers, enterprises, and the government entities we serve,” commented Zain Group CEO and vice-chairman Bader Al-Kharafi.
“It is a great honor for ZainTech to be recognized at such an early stage of its regional expansion strategy,” he added. “The ZainTech team have an explicit mission to support enterprises and government entities in their digital transformation and performance journeys, offering the best expertise, products, and services in the business.”
Zain is also an industry-leading operator for sustainability. In January 2022, it became the first operator in the Middle East and Africa to earn an A- score in the CDP Score Report – Climate Change 2021 for its energy-efficient initiatives.
2. SecurityGen – Vendor Innovation Award
A global telecom security start-up launched by Paolo Emiliani, Amit Nath, and Massimo Romagnoli in 2022, SecurityGen earned the Vendor Innovation Award at the Telecoms World Middle East Awards. It won the award ahead of eight other shortlisted vendors, including Cisco, STC Solutions, Arimac Lanka Pvt, and Enea Aptilo.
SecurityGen received the award for its proprietary and industry-first ACE security platform, built to enhance security for mobile networks via an innovative breach and attack simulation program. The automated program regularly assesses the strength of client network defenses against hackers and other malefactors and makes necessary adjustments to protect against potential vulnerabilities.
Commenting on the award victory, Nath noted how ACE is uniquely designed to help operators protect against complex security threats from external sources. The platform provides research-backed security measure recommendations with professional insight and perspective spanning the entire network.
SecurityGen is headquartered in Rome, Italy, but maintains a strong presence throughout Europe as well as the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. The recent honor is not the first for its ACE offering. The platform also earned second place in the 2022 ROCCO Research Vendor Innovators Awards in Málaga, Spain.
3. Netcracker Technology – 5G Innovator of the Year
Netcracker Technology was also up for the Vendor Innovation Award. While it missed out on that distinction, it did win awards for 5G Innovator of the Year and Virtualization & Cloud leadership. A subsidiary of NEC Corporation, Netcracker Technology provides digital transformation solutions to mobile operators worldwide and maintains a strong presence in the Middle East with regional customers including Zain KSA, du, Etisalat UAE, and Vodafone Oman.
Netcracker was named 5G Innovator of the Year for the success of its private 5G automation solution, which includes edge monetization and edge orchestration in addition to Netcracker Digital Marketplace, which is an advanced e-commerce solution that allows service providers to pair their offerings with third-party applications to deliver personalized service bundles in an expedited fashion. Its extensive partner program solutions contributed greatly to its Virtualization & Cloud Leadership award.