Du opens new track for growth with Ideal Hub

Unveils facility to transform UAE’s digital services landscape

Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), the parent company of telecom operator du, has opened a new track for growth that is not in the connectivity business by unveiling an Ideal Hub yesterday.

The operator aims to showcase strategic advanced technologies to transform the digital services landscape.

“We believe ICT is our biggest opportunity in the future to enhance the UAE’s position as a global hub for tourism, commerce and, more importantly, as a happy place to live,” said Osman Sultan, CEO of EITC.

Smart cities, data science

Built as a semi-modular facility, the facility is designed to present the latest technologies and real-life applications from EITC to its partners. Jihad Tayara, vice-president for ICT commercial and business development at du, said that the hub focuses on smart cities, data science and platform services for the internet of things, artificial intelligence and blockchain.

“We will meet the customer, collaborate and showcase our partners’ development at the hub,” he said.

Telecom operators are licensed to offer connectivity services. On top of that, Sultan said that du can build a lot of services by partnering with other companies for smart city, hosting data services, smart home, managed services, etc.

“We plan to continue our close cooperation with our strategic partners to develop a full range of smart services and cloud solutions,” he said.

“We have many projects ongoing from connected buildings and energy management in the IoT platform. Du is the strategic partner of Smart Dubai and we have more than 400 datasets from government organisations on Dubai Pulse platform.”

According to a recent Ericsson report, UAE telecom operators can capture potential revenues of $3.3 billion (Dh12.11 billion) from digitalisation of industries with 5G technology.

$3.3b

revenues UAE telco operators can capture with 5G