Zain Group and Ericsson have entered into an agreement on 5G research and development. The MoU signing took place at the Zain Technology Conference held in Amman, Jordan this week.
Zain Group, a leading mobile telecom innovator in eight markets across the Middle East and Africa, hosts the Zain Technology Conference (ZTC) annually to bring together some of the best technology providers to the region.
The collaboration aims to develop new 5G use cases, requirements and deployment scenarios, as well as evaluate performance and applicability of potential 5G key technology components.
At the same conference last year, the companies announced the Middle East's first demonstration of proof of concept (PoC) for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). The PoC demonstration uses Ericsson's virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) and virtual IP Multimedia Subsystem (vIMS) solutions.
Hisham Allam, Chief Technology Officer, Zain Group
As a leading 4G operator, we are always working to ensure that we are first to market with new innovations for our customers. Working with Ericsson will enable us to gain additional insights into our customer market and potential growth areas supporting our vision of being a digital lifestyle operator.
Tarek Saadi, Head of GCC and Pakistan at Ericsson
5G will make it possible to deploy IoT devices with a battery life lasting 10 times longer than today. Working together with Zain will enable us to explore new opportunities for use cases that we haven’t yet dreamed of, new markets, and radically new business models.
