Omantel set to roll out 5G services in the Sultanate

Muscat: Omantel, the first and leading provider of integrated telecommunications services in the Sultanate, will be launching its 5G services soon but it may be some time before these are available on your phone.
Talking to Times of Oman, Dr. Ali Al Hashmi, Senior Manager Network Design at Omantel said that while the network is ready to launch 5G services in the country, there are as yet no mobile phones to support it.
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“We are ready from the network perspective but individual mobile phones are not. For example, if you go to some of the areas, you may find 5G appearing as a network but you will not be able to pick it up from your mobile as it doesn’t yet support this feature.”
Mobile phone companies
“Mobile phone companies are working hard to come up with the technology that will support this service and there is a competition going on between them to see who comes up with a viable 5G model first. A couple of vendors at a recent mobile congress in Barcelona were demonstrating 5G phones but these were not yet ready for commercial use. However, some of them are hopeful of a launch by the middle of this year” He added that Omantel started the live trials of 5G about two years ago and received some good results from the network perspective.
“When we speak about 5G, I have to clarify that it is not a replacement for 4G. 5G itself is high bandwidth which will not be immediately available for personal use and that is one of the key elements that everyone should understand. Perhaps in the future, that will be the case but for now it has most use for industrial purposes like logistics, agriculture and management” Al Hashmi said at the award ceremony for the Omantel 5G Use Cases University/ College Competition in collaboration with Ericsson.
Massive network
The competition saw a huge number of college and university students from across Oman taking part to show how the massive network like 5G could be used.
“The students came up with various uses and some of these could be used practically. We at Omantel hope to play the role of incubator for these skills to be developed because when we talk about technology, we must not forget about the human part of it which is the capability. We cannot develop the networks without the development of capabilities, and this should be dynamic to meet market demands,” Al Hashmi said.