Muscat - Telecom services provider Omantel has reiterated its commitment to provide customers with widest coverage and best broadband experience.
Addressing a press meet at the company's headquarters on Saturday, chief operating officer Samy al Ghassany said the company will continue to provide the broadest choice, widest coverage and superior quality of broadband services.
He said that Omantel is currently able to provide broadband services to cover 88 per cent of the population. "We are committed to expand our broadband networks as we have already built out our mobile networks. Our aspiration is to provide broadband coverage to 95 per cent of the population," said Ghassany.
Omantel, which introduced 4G LTE technology in the middle of last year, also introduced LTE FDD technology at the end of 2012 using 1.8GHz spectrum, which had been made available for 4G services.
"We took an important decision to adopt LTE FDD technology as this is in line with global and regional trends. This will ultimately benefit our customers, as the majority of smartphones and devices support the LTE FDD version, particularly in the 1.8GHz spectrum range. The adoption of FDD enabled us to introduce more devices including the 4G-enabled smartphones and modems from Samsung, Nokia and Huawei," said Ghassany.
"When we introduced 4G in mid-2012, it was a stand-alone technology. Now, network technology and devices have matured and we can uniquely offer our customers a seamless 3.5G and 4G service. This involves two aspects. Any customer who downloads will seamlessly and automatically switch from 4G and 3.5G and vice-versa. And for 4G smartphone users, when they receive a voice call, the call will automatically be managed by our 3.5G network," Ghassany added.
He said that Omantel has invested in redundant nationwide backbone network as well as a global network consisting of nine submarine cable systems.
"This currently provides for 50Gpbs international connectivity. At the same time, the quality experience also relates to network build-out, in particular in dense and high-traffic areas. For such areas, Omantel has upgraded its mobile network with up to three times more capacity," he added.
Ghassany said that Omantel, through its unique network position, has managed to attract global content providers to host their servers in Oman. "We are proud to be one of the leading providers of hosting services for the global or regional content providers. This is not only important for Oman, but it provides a value for our customers as well as, currently, more than 30 per cent of our traffic is served locally," he added.
Currently, Omantel's 3.5G network is capable of delivering speeds at 7.2Mbps. As for Omantel's 4G LTE network, no speed caps have been applied. For fixed broadband services, Omantel offers packages up to 24Mbps through ADSL technology and up to 40Mbps through fibre-optic technology.
© Muscat Daily 2013
