Zain-and-HuwaeiKUWAIT: Zain, the leading telecommunications company in Kuwait, has announced a strategic cooperation with Huawei-a leading global ICT solutions provider-to work together to enhance Zain’s business-to-business (B2B) service offerings for organizations across the country. The memorandum of understanding (MoU) recognizes that the digitization of the local economy is opening up new business opportunities, and that telecom operators will play a major role in supporting a hyper connected and intelligent digital world.

As part of the agreement, Zain Kuwait and Huawei will mutually explore opportunities related to public safety services, industry IoT applications, and emergency communication services. Leveraging Zain’s advanced mobile network, the two companies will jointly test technologies such as NB-IOT and LTE-integrated trunking to realize these new ambitions.

The latest announcement builds on Zain’s launch of machine-to-machine services for Kuwait’s enterprise and government sectors in the fall of 2015-part of the company’s strategic vision to enrich the bundle of solutions that Zain offers to corporate customers. Eaman Al-Roudhan, Zain Kuwait CEO said, “As the largest operator in the country offering nationwide 4G services, we recognize that to meet our business customers’ ever-increasing demand for services, we need to continually invest in network upgrades for the future prosperity of the company and the wider economy at large.

Cooperating with Huawei in the B2B offerings, and eventual expand for services targeting organizations across the country, will ensure that Zain Kuwait remains at the forefront of technology, providing our customers especially corporate sector with a superior telecom experience.” “Collaborating with Zain to explore a new generation of B2B applications and services is a significant move in connecting more businesses, cities, and communities across the country. New value chains can thus be developed that benefit local organizations and citizens alike,” says Li Dafeng, president of Middle East and Africa.

The proposed technical trials will ultimately help to widen Zain’s service portfolio in Kuwait and leverage recent investments in the operator’s ultrafast 4.5G mobile network. Zain announced the successful testing of the Middle East’s first 4.5G mobile broadband technology in December 2015 with services reaching 1 Gbps speeds. Zain and Huawei have been strengthening their strategic partnership in various fields to provide customers with a superior telecommunications experience. In recent years, the companies have started running a first-of-its-kind Joint Innovation Center based in Kuwait which serves as a research hub from which Zain is able to advance its mobile broadband network, services, and applications offered to customers across the region.