Tuesday 23 / April / 2024
Muscat: Entire country will be covered by broadband by 2020, using any means available depending on the landscape, Talib Al Rashdi, business relations manager at Oman Broadband said.
“We’ll be covering the whole of Oman in 2020 using one of the three means: fibre optic, mobile broadband through the operator, or through satellite,” he said.
Al Rashdi said very remote areas in particular will have to be covered by satellites.
Realistically, not all areas can benefit from the high-speed fibre optic offers. But in the end, Oman Broadband is aiming to cover the whole country with a broadband connection.
“Our preference is to go for fibre optics. If this is not possible, we’ll go for mobile and if there is no other choice, then we will go for basic broadband using satellites. We are working with the operators and the satellite providers to cover it by any means,” he said on the sidelines of the revelation of the new identity and logo of Oman Broadband during the COMEX 2016 Exhibition.
Feel the difference
“While the first phase of the company involved establishing a team and preparing a network, the second phase of the company is to activate the network and make it feasible for the people to feel the difference of having broadband,” he said.
He said around 30 per cent of Muscat is already covered and that operators are now offering very high speeds.
“The speed that we used to have one year ago was not more than 20 or 25 megabits per second (Mbps). Today, we have speeds of 100 to 150 Mbps and even 1 Gigabyte (GB). This is a very high speed, which enables some other applications, such as smart cities, smart governance and others,” he said.
Al Rashdi said that by 2020, 80 per cent of Muscat will be covered by fibre optic cables.
He added that by 2018, all central areas of the other governorates will be covered by fibre optic, representing about 30 per cent of the area outside Muscat.
A presentation by Oman Broadband further showed the planning of expected coverage in the areas of Muscat.
