 Hello and welcome to Capacity Middle East Extra powered by JSA. That's right. We are JSA and I am Dean Perine coming to you live on location at the beautiful Grand Hyatt Dubai for Capacity Middle East and I am about to conduct my very last interview of the entire event and without further ado let me introduce you to my new friend Mr. Sohail Cutter. Sohail is the VP of Wholesale for Omentel. Sohail, welcome and thank you for being here. Thank you for being my very last interview of the entire day. Thank you Dean and I'm glad to be the last one. Me too my friend, me too. But so for our viewers that don't already know why don't you tell them a little bit about yourself and a little bit about Omentel. Yeah, so my name is Sohail Cutter and I'm the Vice President of Omentel, Omentel Communication Company. Obviously Omentel is an incumbent operator in the Sultanate of Oman with a mobile fix and every network, but we also have what we call it Wholesale Business Unit. In Wholesale Business Unit we are basically responsible for investment in sub-marine cables, roaming, voice and everything else, but mainly focus on sub-marine site and especially from the event point of view. As Omentel we have been investing since 2000 and I would say nine into sub-marine cable systems. And today we are landing around 15 sub-marine cable systems in Oman. That is already active up and running. Congratulations, that's very, very cool. Thank you very much. And by 2024 we will have four more landings over there. So we are talking about 19 cable systems with us and obviously with our partners or our other operators in the country, we have already two cable systems. So we are talking about a country with around 21 to 22 sub-marine cable systems. So obviously with this kind of infrastructure that you have in any country, you're basically creating it as a place where everyone can come and transit. So part of our strategy was not only to invest in infrastructure, but also to create the environment. So in 2017 we entered into a joint venture with Equinix. It's a relationship which is a joint relationship between us and Equinix. And we have deployed in 2020 the first data center called MC1. And nowadays we are under deployment. Another data center in Salala, which is called SN1. And these are going to be the two hubs of, let's say, the connectivity in the region. Obviously, with this environment and the infrastructure, we have obviously attracted a lot of hyperscalers who are sitting in Oman and serving the whole region from here. So this is what we do. Yeah, no, that is quite an accomplishment. Thank you very much. It seems like we went from one, two, three, four. And then the next thing we're talking in the 20s. That is quite an accomplishment. But let's talk a little bit about the show. I have noticed that there is business quite literally happening all up and down the foyer here today. Quite literally the last day of the show. Has it been a good show for you? I think Capacity Middle is always been the best in the region. This is my 12th, I would say, or 14th, 14th actually. Attendance in the Capacity Middle East. This show itself, I think, last year was the first show after COVID, two unfortunate COVID. And now this is the second one. And this is very special because I see that people who want to make some change, they are here. So we are having very good meetings. As a team, we are around 22 people over here from our company and our partners. And we had around 45 meetings each. Wow, that has a good show for you. So I think I'm beating your record. You absolutely are. I'm just glad that it's winding down for the both of us. But yeah, change. You mentioned change. That's how it feels to me, too. Like I said, we have done approximately upwards of 30 interviews. And there is a theme, and that theme is change. And that theme also feels like global change. We're here in the Middle East. But ultimately, it feels like we are talking about what the world is going to look like over the next decade or two decades. And the work that you and companies like you are doing in this region of the country to make sure that the entire world stays present. Yep. So I think a very relevant point and the relevant word change. Over the last, let's say, 10 years, or even it will take five years. Absolutely. Everything have changed. Operator like us selling, let's say, 10 Gs. Now nobody talks to us for 10 Gs. People talk to us terabytes of capacity. Hyper scalars are coming into this region. Their presence is increasing on a day-on-day basis. And the capacity requirements in this region have grown from, by at least, I would say, 45% to 50% in the last two years. And that requires a lot of investment to fulfill those demands. Importantly, this demand is not coming from the local operators in the region. This demand is actually coming from the hyper scalars because they're coming closer to their eyeballs. And for the local operators, just to go and to connect to them, they need local infrastructure within this region. But then hyper scalars require a global infrastructure to connect back to their data centers and all those. So I would say there's huge changes coming in. And we see this continuing for another five to eight years. And I think this will change a lot more other things. So the speed of that change, does it create challenges? And what are those challenges? A lot of challenges, I would say. Give us more. I think one of the biggest challenge I would say because of the speed of these changes is coping up with the demand. Fortunately or unfortunately in this industry, setting up infrastructure takes at least four to five years. Building a new sub-banding cables to start from starting a discussion with partners and then RFS, I would say four years, minimum. Now, in those four years, you will be going through a period which is called crunch period that you don't have capacities and you have customers who are coming and asking for a lot of capacities and back calls and all those kinds of things. The second challenge I think which was previously and it's going off is waiting, but still there is the logistic part. In the last two years, unfortunately, we have seen the deliveries from our suppliers. Supply change, yeah. Yeah, it was a disaster. We have seen, you know. And you're not alone, everybody. A year and a half for delivering of the content or the cards and those kind of thing. It is improving, but still we are not back to 2019. Because what happened was during the COVID, a lot of companies, including ourselves, they put up huge orders because they saw the demand coming in. Now, those demand is not continuing forever, but those orders are already in place. So the suppliers are already choked up. So we are hoping that by the end of this year, we will go back to normal, but still we are not in normal. It does feel like we are getting back to normal though, doesn't it? Yeah. COVID, thanks God it's over, but. That's right. That's right. So Hal, thank you very much for being with us. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And thank you for watching JSA TV. We'll see you very soon. Thank you guys.