Saudi Mobily/ITC Consortium kicks off SNFN modernisation project with Huawei

Riyadh – The Consortium of the main Saudi Telecom carriers, Etihad Etisalat Company (Mobily) and Integrated Telecom Company (ITC) penned the agreement of the Saudi National Fiber Network (SNFN) modernisation project with their partner Huawei.

The SNFN project will contribute to the end-to-end network transformation and agile automation strategy as part of the Saudi Vision 2030 by building the first 5G and B2B-driven, ultra-broadband optical backbone network in the Middle East, according to a press release on Sunday.

Established in 2007 by Mobily, Bayanat Al-Oula, and ITC, the SNFN Consortium has started modernising its entire transport network in a bid to become the most competitive in the Saudi Market and to add more value to end-users.

The cutting-edge solution offered by Huawei provides the first end-to-end 120-channels in the region. Each channel carries ultra-high and evaluative capacity from 200/400Gbps and above. In addition, the Consortium’s next-generation network will offer customers a fully resilient and end-to-end network with flexible and automatic service provisioning.

“Flexible traffic adjustment and abundant protection service level agreements (SLAs) offered by SNFN are very attractive to B2B scenarios and use-cases, which really evolves Mobily/ITC Ultra-Broadband optical backbone network,” commented chief technology officer (CTO) of Mobily, Alaa Malki.

For his part, CTO of ITC, Ahmed Al Anqari, stated, “Massive embedded AI monitoring and proactive network health mechanisms will help reduce the long time-to-market and delivery time to a few seconds and improve the service availability and enhanced customer experience.”

"The Ultra C band 120-channels’ first commercial use in the Middle East indicates that the WDM backbone network has entered into the ultra-high-speed of 200G/400G era. In the future, we will keep on supporting Mobily/ITC in coping with service challenges in the 5G era by improving transport network performance to provide the best service experience and achieve greater business success,” concluded President of Huawei Transmission & Access Product Line, Richard Jin.