 Thank you, Ayman, for the introduction and welcome everyone to the first panel of the day. We have a very distinguished group of business leaders for this session and the focus of the discussion for this panel will be on infrastructure as the key foundation for connecting to the future. If I could ask our panelists to come and join me on the stage, please, and then we will get started. Thank you. Okay, just to introduce briefly the speakers we have here today. They are in the agenda, but first we have the CEO of QNBN, Mohammed Armanai. We have the CEO of Vodafone Qatar, Kyle Wildhill. We have the CEO of Gulfbridge International, Ahmad Mecki. We have the Chief Strategy Officer of Eshal Satt, Anthony Baker. We have the Head of Engineering Information Systems, Nessa Bresid Al Qawari. We have the Chief Marketing Officer of Oruidhu Ian Denge, and we have Al Hashimi, the Strategic Advisor to MICT. In terms of the format for this session, I've asked the panelists to each give some opening remarks regarding the National Broadband Plan, just to take a few minutes giving their first thoughts. Then we'll move on to some questions and hopefully stimulate some discussion amongst the panel as regards specifically the infrastructure aspects of the plan. Then if we have time I'd like to open for questions from the floor. I would like to ask for all panellists please at this stage just to keep opening remarks brief and to the point. We would like to move on to a wider discussion as soon as possible. Firstly, I would like to hand over to Ian to give your opening comments on the plan from Oruidhu's perspective. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to be here at this symposium connecting to the future to talk about Oruidhu's contribution to broadband. Oruidhu has been at the forefront of delivering advanced ICT products and services since 1949 when we installed the first telephone exchange. As a community based company our brand promise is to promote human growth and enrich customers lives. National Broadband is at the heart of this challenge. We know from our experience as the company that built the network that is fueling Qatar's growth that you need to be planning 5, 10, 20 years ahead if you're going to deliver the infrastructure that the nation needs. To put the current growth into context, the 2013 report National Fibre Strategies by Arthur D. Little shows that Qatar witnessed the fastest nationwide fibre rollout in the world in 2012. This is judged by the average percentage of homes passed by fibre and the number of homes connected in the year. The study was based on figures from the FTTH council. It also shows that they are clear as we've been discussing the smaller clear benefits to improving broadband infrastructure. Jobs are created and there is a permanent boost to GDP. Ultrafast broadband also drives critical diversifications of economies as smaller, medium businesses and entrepreneurs are among the first to benefit. I'm very proud to say that it's a redo who's been supporting this rapid growth. We've been spending over 1 billion Qatari reels, invested 1 billion Qatari reels to have a redo fibre pass all households in Qatar by the end of 2014 replacing all of the copper cables. Of course we have strong existing connections with all of our customers because they're already connected to us for copper services. This has made the task a lot easier to deliver the right experience but of course it comes with many challenges as well. Not least block ducts and internal wiring in the home and other challenges. Enterprises in Qatar have been benefiting from fibre services for more than a decade. All of the key organisations including Qatar Airways and all the large government departments have been connected on point to point fibre services which gives us a strong understanding of businesses. These are the advantages in the market that have been able to redo to become a regional leader in fibre services and I'm proud to announce today that we have more than 100,000 connections on a redo fibre in Qatar. Which now covers most of the urban areas. Our home broadband redo fibre is transforming lives delivering speeds up to 10 times faster than the copper connections. Giving customers access to next generation communications, education and entertainment including the mosaic IPTV service that we provide here in Qatar. Qatar has the world's 10th highest internet penetration according to the United Nations report state of broadband 2013. Impressively Qatar is the only country in the Middle East and North Africa listed in the top 10. Our aim as a redo is to help position Qatar among the world's best. In terms of regulatory support, governments and regulators need to move decisively to fibre in order to support future economic growth. In particular providing clarity and a regulatory environment that allows companies like a redo to deliver the best possible services and the best possible value for customers. In 2022 Qatar will command the world stage in hosting the FIFA World Cup. We fully support the national broadband plan in making Qatar one of the best connected countries in the world and providing visitors with an ICT experience that will be unparalleled in history. Thank you very much. I think we'll probably pick up a couple of those comments about your coverage plans and take up. It will be interesting for the session as we go through. Secondly if I could ask Kyle to make his opening remarks please on the plan. Yes thank you Matt. Good morning everyone please forgive me for my illness. I have what's colloquially known as man flu so I'll be as brief as I possibly can. I guess Vodafone's job now is to provide some competition to the extraordinary feats that Aridur managed to achieve in the last few years. Because in my mind there's no doubt that broadband penetration comes from a competitive environment. So when I actually looked at some figures recently I saw that Qatar was the 10th most connected mobile broadband country in the world but only the 89th most connected fixed broadband country in the world. So I really see the objective now is to accelerate quickly towards the 2016 vision which is to have two people who are able to connect every customer in the country. And I think that's the important role that we can play. I think the way that we'll be able to do that is working very closely as we are now with our partner QMBN who are doing a terrific job of providing passive infrastructure as fast as they possibly can so that you can get a real consumer choice. I think the most important part of the plan for me is that the relationship between broadband penetration and economic development is very, very clear. And so that's the part that we would like to play is to continue to progress with that economic development. I've finished. Thank you. I was trying to be brief. Good timing. Thank you. I'll look after that. Okay. Thank you, Calv. And I appreciate keeping your first comments brief. There'll be plenty of opportunity to discuss at length shortly. Okay. Let's nice lead into QMBN, Mohammed. Clearly keep partner with Vodafone. Could you give us your first thoughts on the plan please? I'll try to be more brief than Kyle on that first thanks. Good luck. First thanks Matt for inviting me here and being participating in this event. And it's my pleasure to be with all of you here. I think it was starting by thanking the team who has actually helped in keeping this plan and all the participants who contributed in building this plan for all of us in order to drive the broadband industry forward. I think broadband in general is vital in today's digital world and no economies or no development can happen without having a broadband. So it is the foundation for everything. And I think the plan is identifying that vital element and it's important for the countries to go forward and get developed. You know many countries today are setting aggressive targets for their national broadband plan and I think we have a much more aggressive target here in Qatar by introducing this plan. So we need actually to cope with it as a country and as an industry to meet a target that has been set on today's plan that we are launching. And we as a country cannot afford the lighting into that race where targets are being aggressively set for all the nation across the globe and we need actually to participate in a structured way. And I think that this plan actually would help us to structure the way forward for the broadband in order to achieve the overall countries objectives that are coming. Finally I would like to conclude that it seems to be this plan will make everyone change their course to the way that the plan actually has pointed out in order to make it a successful plan. Thank you. Okay thank you for those comments. I will just move over to our next speaker. My name is Nasser and I'm in a different situation than all the other colleagues in here. I'm representing the Ashghal Public Works Authority where we will be more as a partnership with the Ministry of ICT in here. We're supposed to support and we're supposed to receive the benefits from the support too. Ashghal in general they're looking after all the governmental infrastructure. We are owning almost 30% of the government infrastructure in here. We are very essential to the ICT government in here to support in regards of the broadband. And also we are depending on the results of this support because we have a very massive project and this type of project depends on technology. One of them it is the intelligent transportation system and there is another projects heavy and expensive projects which cannot run by manual system which is we need to apply the technology in here. We're looking for two types of benefits from the ICT in here which is internal and external. Internally we need to manage our projects and our system internally with the technology over the remote areas and things. And the second thing it is the interaction with the public and with the government. We need to have informative system and we need to have interactive system with the others. We already started and established a lot of things. We are expecting a lot from ICT. And also we are supporting ICT because most of the execution land will be provided through us and they are supposed to help and assist the ICT to succeed. The speed of it is very important for us. The support and the sincere support is very important to us. We are expecting a lot from them and after that we will both of us reflect the transparency with the public and with the other governmental entity. The services start already sometime as Her Excellency mentioned. Almost 10 years ago start converting into technology and into e-government system providing them information and reaching you up to your house with the whole services or the governmental services. And we are looking forward to have more and heavy. And I believe that the next step it will be a heavy data exchange which requires such a system and such vision to deliver this type of services up to our end users. Thank you. Excellent, thank you Nasa. Could I ask you to pass the microphone to your right to Anthony to give Eshel's comments on the plan. Thank you. Thank you very much Matt. I hope you can all hear me back there. Just one or two words about Eshel Sats. We were formed in 2010 and we recently launched our first satellite for Qatar in August of this year. So this has been a very proud year for us in a very proud moment. Satellite has some unique advantages in supporting the National Broadband Plan. The good thing about satellite is by nature it broadcasts its signal over a very large area. So everybody who can see the satellite has a ubiquitous service. Everyone receives the same quality of service. Secondly, the satellite is always on. The reliability of the satellite is very, very high. It has designed to last 15 years in space. Ours is projected to last even longer than that. So it's a long-term solution. It's also very useful for signal cast if you're trying to transmit something to everybody simultaneously. It's one of the most efficient ways rather than going through other mechanisms. The reliability is something really to talk about because even in today's environment, if we look at the football games, the Olympics and things like that, you will see parked outside the stadiums, a satellite news gathering truck, and they will broadcast that live feed to an uplink station elsewhere and distributed around the world. They still prefer to use the reliability of the independent satellite link. Another key thing about satellites is the resilience. So in disaster zones and things like that, when all else fails, the satellite has a very strong image. And you can see that today in the Philippines. There is a myth that the satellites are expensive, but they might be expensive compared with everyday urban solutions for broadband. If you look at connecting to that last 5% or remote farms, then satellite can always be a solution, and it does become more cost-effective. So I think this is how we hope to support the national problem. Thank you, Anthony. I think we're going to persist with the table-based microphones. If I could just pass over to Hasim representing MICT just for some final introductory comments, and then we'll move on to some questions. Thank you, Hasim. Thank you, Matt. Good morning. Well, first of all, of course, as it was pointed out earlier, y Steadam Cataw, we are very proud to say that in the front line as regard to the broadband. And I think that this was basically the vision that the government had, and it was executed. Now, I will go back to the first remark that was made regarding the spectrum. I think that without the spectrum availability, of course, it would not be very easy that we could deliver an excuse to broadband all along. So in this role, Steadam Cataw has played a very important role in the ITU, the National Telecommunication Union's conferences. With regard to the policies, I think that Steadam Cataw is also ahead. A broadband commission has been established a few years ago, and Her Excellency Dr Hessa sits on the board of the commission. And this, of course, has helped, without a doubt, of bringing up this plan that we have now, the National Plan. The commission itself has pointed out that we should have, or they should be goals or goals for achieving broadband. And one of them was that all the states should have a National Plan, at least by 2015. So we are one year ahead of the goal. On the other hand, of course, the role that has to be played by all, that's the service providers, the operators and the regulators. They have to work together very closely. If we have to achieve the penetration, the main important factors, that's the affordability and connectivity, then they all have to work together. And I am very grateful that I think that Orido and Vodafone are doing very well. The numbers, without a doubt, shows that. So I think that to come to the last point of the opening remarks, the last bit is the most important thing, is the execution. And this is why, as Dr Hessa, Her Excellency, pointed out in her opening remarks, that already the leader of it has taken that decision by forming committees, two important committees. That's the e-government committee and cyber security committee. It's time for execution itself of the plan to be conclusive and positive the working group that Dr Hessa referred to has been established. So I think that with all these together, all the efforts together, we are certainly going to be achieving our target. Excellent, thank you. If you can give us Gulf Bridge's final comments and then we'll move into Q&A. Thank you. Okay. As-salam alaikum. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to start by congratulating Her Excellency Dr Hessa and the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology for publishing the National Broadband Plan. And I'd like to thank you for inviting me to this panel. Talking about the international connectivity and the dependency on the international connectivity that's increasing day by day. Talking about individuals and corporates and enterprises and even governments. And the growth on the demand on that connectivity requires on both fronts nationally and internationally proper infrastructure. To connect to one place to another place all over the globe, there are only two ways from the technology point of view. Either satellite or cable, both complement each other. 90% of cable, 10% of satellite. But they complement each other then to provide that kind of connectivity and serve the end users on all the levels talking about retail or commercial. Qatar fully aligned with the vision of Qatar 2030 and the vision of the Ministry of Communication invested in both in the subsea cable industry and in satellite as well. Talking about the company I'm representing, my company GBI, which is Majority Invested by Qatar. We deployed already now a fully operational network of 22,000 kilometers of hybrid network between subsea and Tristil crossing 25 countries and we're proud also to manage this network from here, the knock in Qatar monitoring more than 80,000 points all over this network. So this is definitely a great enabler to the national broadband plan and with the advancement and the development in that sector in the subsea industry in the last few years allowed great and enormous amount of data to be transferred from one place to another place. Deploying a proper national network and with the national broadband plan this will allow transferring this to the end user to make benefit of this kind of great development that happened in this industry in the last few years. The main pillars are very clear for all of us when we read the broadband plan and the four sectors, social, human and also all the economic, all the other sectors is matching as well the establishing of this company when we started, of course beside making it for profit. We're, as a company, fully committed to support that plan and wish you all the best. Thank you. Thank you, Ahmed. Well, thank you all for your first comments. I'd like to move into some questions now and hopefully we can get some discussion going amongst the panelists. I would like just to start this in the order that we've had the speakers so starting with Ian from a redo first. I mean you've already said something about the redo's extensive investments in fibre. I would like just to confirm the scope and timing of that if possible. The second one is that the plan talks about a hazard at heart, a very important strand about supporting competition and how a redo views that competition developing in Qatar in the future. And the third one would relate to the specific opportunities coming out of the 2022 World Cup. So if you could take those please, that would be excellent. Well, with regard specifically to the rollout... Sorry, for all speakers, would you mind just moving close to the microphones please? I think we're having a little trouble with that. I just think over like this. With regards specifically to the rollout of a redo fibre, I mentioned that we now have 100,000 homes connected to fibre in Qatar. The homes past is around 230, 240,000 homes. That's about 80% of homes in Qatar depending on which figures you use in terms of the total households. And our target is to pass around 90% of homes by the end of 2014. In terms of small businesses, we launched a fibre for business in the middle of this year. And we would expect to... Well, we passed pretty much all of the small businesses, but expect most of those to be migrated also pretty much by the end of 2014. So that takes care of the brownfield sites, if you like. And then of course, as greenfield sites evolve, then we'll take a redo fibre to those sites. And on the question about competition, how do you see that evolving in the future? Well, it's interesting because one of the things that Broadband brings is it expands the whole competitive arena for companies like a redo for telecommunications companies. We're already seeing in the consumer space, consumers are using, they have access through their smartphones and home Broadband to a whole range of digital media services. So that's a whole new part of the competitive landscape. And through applications over the top, customers are increasingly using services which are perhaps substituting traditional telecommunications services. So navigating this new competitive landscape is probably one of the largest challenges. And that's true also in the business segment too, if you think about, I'm sure we're going to be talking about smart cities, smart transport. This is the domain of IT services companies, vertical IT specialist companies. So we're starting to expand the whole environment, if you like, or the competitive arena. And navigating that I think is probably one of the biggest challenges for a telco, or for all of us actually. OK, well I'm sure our next two speakers I'll pick up on this point on competition too. Just finally before we move on, the Will Cup in terms of what you see as opportunities for a redo, both fixed and mobile, what can you tell us? Well, I'm a marketeer so here, I heard the other day, we often overestimate the short term impact of technology but underestimate the long term. But I really think we can see clearly now in my mind's eye as a marketeer all of the potential innovative services that will be available for visitors, for citizens of Qatar in 2022 with the broadband infrastructure in place now, whether it's fixed or mobile. And with the devices that are available to us, whether it's consumer electronics in home, for the connected home, or the mobile devices, the smartphones with the power that they have, I can see, you can see the visitor coming, booking everything online, you can see the transport system controlled from afar, you can see our visitors booking tickets, booking entertainment online. I think some of the things that may be in the past we thought were in the future are very much with us now and very much with us in 2022. It's very exciting. Okay, great, thank you. Kyle, Vodafone's presence in the fixed market here in Qatar is relatively limited at the moment. You've already talked about your partnership with QNBN. I'd like to ask you which parts of the plan are most important for you in terms of building up that presence here, particularly on the fixed side? I think the countries who've been most successful in terms of deploying broadband, fixed broadband on a ubiquitous basis have always built it on one single infrastructure. And I think Qatar, because of the size and scale of the country being small, it means that one single infrastructure is going to be the answer. So I think the most important part of the plan for me is when it talks about one single infrastructure being the right one to build. So I think that's most important because I think that gives you efficiency and scale as fast as you possibly can and allows for competition to be at the retail end rather than specifically in the infrastructure end. Okay, so the plan does talk about minimising duplication of assets. That's what you're referring to. That's what I'm referring to, yes. In terms of your relationship with QNBN and taking this forward, you want to say a little bit about that now? Yes, sure. So our relationship with QNBN now is a joint deployment plan. So we have a three-year plan agreed to deploy. We are working very closely with them now. We've connected our first corporate customers in West Bay and we now have four compounds connected so we can provide retail services to those compounds. So I think that's very exciting. We have a good collaboration. It's a very ambitious thing that we're doing I think and it will be the first time in the world that a commercial and government organisation have successfully deployed private partnership together. So I think that makes us very optimistic about the opportunity for competition now. Okay, very good. Just thinking slightly longer term about what Vodafone sees is the opportunity in Qatar both on your fixed and mobile networks long-term on the assumption that there's extensive deployment that you have access to. What's your vision for Vodafone in this market? First of all, I think customers should and will worry much less about what's the technology that delivers a solution to them. So I think over time convergence to me means that what a customer will be thinking about is in my home I want a broadband connection, I want TV, I want access to content, I want Wi-Fi. So that's certainly what's happening in Europe where people are beginning to bundle and buy products together and are much less worried about how you actually get the connection and bandwidth into their home. Secondly, as Ian just mentioned, I think the really exciting part of Qatar is going to be the smart cities. So we have some developments here like with Sherab and Lucille and the rail project where you're going to see first deployments of very, very innovative smart technology. And I think to me that's the part that I think this greenfield development part is going to be very exciting and will allow us to bring lots of new cutting-edge technology to the country. Great, OK. Well, thank you that. Very, very interesting first comments. And Mohammed, it's a good link again back to yourself in terms of QMBN, I guess, has faced some challenges since its inception in terms of developing its business. What do you see in the plan that helps you overcome those barriers and accelerate roll-outs? Yeah, as you spot us right, QMBN has been facing challenges since the start of QMBN and this is mainly because of the model and how it's constructed and the acceptance or the integration of the model within the existing ecosystem that exists in Qatar. So we could see challenges in terms of integrating QMBN within the utility framework that exists in the country and how QMBN can have access to that framework or integrate with that in a specific. And access to the right-of-way and the ducts and the available infrastructure that exists in the country. And I think the plan pointed out a few of the action points that would actually help QMBN to move forward in achieving the causes and the goals of why QMBN was established. The major one that I would see as an action point which is the duct access issues and the availability or the review of the framework of the right-of-way and how that would be managed bone forward. Additionally also the in-building cabling issue which exists today I think whatever in-building exist in a brownfield area does not meet the requirement to go forward with the fibre technology and there is a need to review that and invest either from the government or the private entities on that area to go forward. Additionally also is the efficient resource management. This is a very critical issue because we need to manage things efficiently. As Kyle mentioned, the size of the market does not allow actually that everyone builds as we go otherwise we will be having a monopoly situation for some of the existing operators in the country and that would continue naturally without doing anything. Seeing the market size and making sure that the resources are being managed efficiently across the different operators would actually make sure that competition takes place and such payers as QMBN and whatever and maybe in the future would be able to play in our market. Would you be able to tell us a little bit about your ambitions in terms of roll out in the future? We started as, maybe the majority would know that QMBN has started as a government initiative somewhere in 2009. The company came to life in 2011 and we connected the first customer in 2012, early 2012. As I'm sitting, I'm connecting the first gentleman on my right and on my left. I think all the international connectivity of whatever one and some other organisation and battle is going through QMBN network to our colleague in GPI and soon hopefully we will add its heads up once their infrastructure is hopefully ready. Apart from that, we have passed almost 10% of the total household and residential unit and I think we focus mainly on the critical business district that exists in Qatar. So we see all the areas outside, all the towers area in West Bay almost has been passed by QMBN network and we started connecting customer around it. I think over the first few years we were building the factory and now the factory has been completed and we are scaling up to speed up our roll out over the coming three years to achieve the target that has been set in our coverage obligation in the last. One final one, picking up again this concept of supporting healthy competition in the market which is one of the first pillar of the plan really. What's your feedback from the market about the impact that QMBN might have long term as a catalyst for competition? It's a very interesting feedback because we would see actually lots of interest from many entities, my colleague here and also from Ashgar for example we are supporting him in many of the projects that they are executing like the intelligence traffic system for example and health sector we see lots of demand and lots of initiative, we are trying to support the central project for example. Plenty of opportunity that exists today in the market and there is a very high potential for it. It's a new area that hasn't been served and opportunity do come and require an infrastructure. It was also mentioning that QMBN by its model is an open network for all operators so whatever we do actually we do it as an open infrastructure so the connectivity that we delivered to Vodafone for example today on the same connectivity we can introduce other operator over the same link which is something that would support competition and would make it as a catalyst of competition in the country. Okay, very good, thank you. You picked up by a couple of points there about access issues and I think it would be useful now just to move to Nass representing Ashgar. The plan makes some points about passive infrastructure being a fundamental building block of new networks and competition and one of the things specifically asked for is existing duct ownership to be clarified by the end of this year by 20th so that's a pretty tall order now given we only have 20 days or so. What issues do you perceive in terms of trying to understand duct ownership in a nation such as Qatar? And again if you could speak very closely to the microphone please just so I guess that they're back in here, thank you. Before I start about those issues we are keen in here in Qatar for having the broadband network over here to depend on and to start up with but also we are not the owners for the corridor, the telecommunication corridor within the road corridors and things like this the ownership of this it is belong to the ICT ministry Qatar in here and they can utilize this corridor to coordinate with all the telecommunication any networks happens over there. Our task in here is to regulate the usage of those corridors and not let anybody go on to the other rules over there and that's all. To protect your corridors and to make sure that you are following up anything happened to your network or close to your network and that's all of our play role in here. One of the things that is again part of one of the policy actions is the development of the centralized infrastructure database by 2014. Is that something that's feasible? How do you see that being born out in the next 12? A database of assets infrastructure assets that can be used or to stimulate deployment? Yeah, what happens? The ownership of this assets it is shared between Ashghal and the other governmental entities. So what we are doing these nowadays we are trying to laser scan the entire country in here in 3D and this project started almost 8 months ago and we are trying also to ground penetrate with ultrasound survey for the entire country to take or to collect the old infrastructure and above the service information. So we will have the entire country in 3D not only as a building also as a layer, a geological layer so you will know where is your network over there what is existing right now and how to plan the things how to propose based on those three things and most probably that we are going to put all of this in a private cloud of the broadband national broadband QMPN allow us or one of one of their competitors and to share this whole of data and infrastructure to be decentralized with the entire government so everybody will update this data and it is a blockable building information management that what we call the BEM system which will help you to identify everything and after that we need to build up the other systems on top of it like intelligent transportation system and the other application that will make more transparency between the governmental activities and the public and the government sharing with the other government entity so the ownership it will be determined for all of those people who maintain their databases over there and they will let them look after their assets as an owners for all those databases Did I hear you correct there when you talked about a 3D geographic database effectively was that correct? That's quite sophisticated in terms of many markets around the world I can't name many that follow that kind of approach so that's a very positive thing I think for Qatar Last question to you Nasser in terms of coordination between infrastructure deployments Do you see any opportunity as regards synergies between telecoms and other infrastructures being rolled out particularly in the greenfield areas for example with utility networks Llywodraeth Llywodraeth First of all we are government and sharing only with government because this type of sharing it's containing a lot of information and a lot of data and this data is supposed to be going from date it's supposed to wrap with the security and one ownership and since it's between government and government it's okay once there is a third party it's coming up to this kind of share it's supposed to be sponsored by one of those governmental entities let me put make it more clean we can share with Qtel Oridu I'm still going to the vast with the phone and all the others but this is supposed to be regulated and it's supposed to be through the ICT Ministry so our approval it is as Ashgol or even as if I can say the Ministry of Municipality it's supposed to be from government to government it's supposed to go to ICT Qatar and ICT Qatar they authorised those people to execute their projects for them for short or long term if it is like this it's supposed to be ICT Qatar if it is like this we don't have any problem and everything can go as easy and fast if it is not why we're saying all of this because there is two types of government ownership sorry in here one of it is a private and the other one is a government the government which is in broad corridors and we have to put only the government works has corridors over there and we have to manage all of this representing the ownership of the government in the roads so we have to manage all of those corridors how to manage those road corridors I mean utility corridors it is through the ownership of this one and it's supposed to be a purely government none private in there and that's what happened with all network they started as a private company but since they are in governmental utility we contain Qatar call to after that okay, excellent thank you Anthony, we've heard quite a bit about fibre and passive infrastructure you perhaps take a different view on what Qatar needs can you say a little bit about what you see HLSAT providing and how it fits in with the plan certainly our first satellite has several missions most of them are the capacities gone but there's one particular mission which would be ideal for Qatar it's in the upper frequencies it means you can deploy small equipment you can provide a broadband experience it's somewhat unique but it could be used for those areas which are maybe out of reach maybe need a broadband instantly because our satellite is ready now so if you want to deploy something very quickly so it could be for the rural networks for the labour camps typically oil platforms use them also for the high reliability services maybe even for Ashkel on the road intelligent traffic system if they want a diverse route away from cables on the ground that could be provided for the rail system perhaps if you want a consumer TV and multimedia experience on a train and you're away from the conurbation perhaps that's a solution as well is there any link with the smart city concept that we heard about earlier today sorry is there any link or any opportunity for Ashkel sat in the smart city concept certainly again because the service is already there you could deploy machine to machine sensors and the satellite could provide an alternative to the terrestrial way of bringing it also because we provide a ubiquitous service over a whole coverage area if you are using a sensor in Qatar and then you wanted to move to UAE or GCC or MENA make this on a mobile platform the same equipment would work everywhere and likewise you can import that equipment Blair mentioned the importance of spectrum as part of plans and because we've been talking about infrastructure so much we haven't really had the opportunity to discuss that but of course any discussion about satellite always brings into you know question spectrum and the plan does talk about a spectrum management and release plan are there any specific aspects of that that you would like to feed into or have concerns about what spectrum is the lifeblood of all wireless systems and particularly satellite as well so I think what we're looking for is clarity in the regulations so our business plans are 15, 20 years per per satellite so we need certainty over that period of what the regulations and what the access to spectrum would be now spectrum is very contested between terrestrial systems and competition within our industry as well so the spectrum allocated to satellite we counted that the 75 satellites you can see from Qatar so the potential reuse factor is very efficient so with sharing spectrum there's two issues, one a national and one an international on the national basis we would like to see some spectrum allocated to satellites on a preferred basis and some for mobile but we need to get this cleared with our neighbours within the GCC within the Arab group and nationally through the international telecommunications union we have been supported very well by the ministry and Hashim here has worked for us in the international for it trying to help us gain the access we require and the regulatory authority has also been most helpful in trying to secure spectrum for us just to be clear the planet itself doesn't make any judgments yet on how spectrum may be allocated in the future but it does call for clarity or certainty as you require so hopefully that will be addressed in due course Ahmet let's move on to the international connectivity part now please we had a little bit about in your introductory comments about how Qatar is compares to other countries but could you just expand on that a little bit and explain are there any potential bottlenecks in terms of international capacity or is Gulfbridge current network and future plans sufficient to deal with the demand that the national broadband plan may place on the state sure just to answer the part why what's the difference between Qatar and other countries in the region from the capacity point view the international capacity generally in this industry in the sub-secretary industry in the region into two categories inside the Gulf or countries around the Gulf and countries outside the Gulf the countries outside the Gulf by geography used to enjoy the access of all the international cables connecting Asia to Europe and vice versa the countries inside the Gulf or around the Gulf they depend somehow on connectivity for international access either through other countries or even if it is sub-seed it will connect through other countries as well to provide them the connectivity to other international cables this is definitely a great privilege by geography sometimes it's not fair to give that kind of access to these countries Qatar may a smart move by making this investment in GVI to provide this kind of fair access to all the countries not only Qatar but all the countries within the Gulf in a very fair way from the operators point of view we have double landing here with RIDU and Vodafold which is definitely also showing that it's fair access to the licensing telecom operators here international access as well as the other countries in the region so this is definitely a differentiator here that such kind of investment is bringing to Qatar and to the region the demand and the growth on the demand this cable is providing terabets of capacity that can serve Qatar for the coming years with the exponential growth on the demand in all the sectors as I mentioned the deployment of the national broadband plan will help to allow this kind of access and to use this kind of huge capacity to the end users the plan also this may go into the boundary I guess between where you typically operate but it would be interesting in your views on the idea or the concept of an internet exchange point in Qatar internet exchange points of course the Gulf has a number of them Qatar doesn't have one yet clearly there's a direct link into the nature of your business do you think it's a good idea that an IXP what would be needed to make it work properly good idea yes it's a good idea to have an internet exchange here in Qatar it's an idea that support to make this happen to be successful first talk about internet exchange is a place where all the carriers can meet with also the contents providers and they serve each other to provide the service to the end users the main two components for the successful internet exchange is diversity of international access this is very important to be there and the availability of digital contents providing the diversity of the international access investing on that and the satellite as well all of these kind of international access connectivity this definitely and the diversity is a must here to have a proper successful IXP the availability of the contents is mandatory as well to be able to host these contents and to attract the major content players globally and regionally to host their data here Qatar already invested also in data centers with international standards like MISA and this is definitely another enabler to pour the IXP to be here and make it ready and successful thank you we have about 10 minutes less I'm quickly going to go over to Hashim just to give from your perspective this is a plan that was produced or led by MICT just if you could give your thoughts on what you've heard from the panellist so far as regards the plan and what you see the key next steps are really in terms of moving into a delivery phase thank you first of all the sound is not very clear I think the room has not been designed properly acoustically I think the plan certainly the role of ICT in the plan to be executed would be the guidance guidance with respect to how it will get executed I think that as I it's a collaboration it's a collaboration between all three or four even early this year and in May I go back to the international conferences there was a forum which is very famous I'm sure Matt you are aware of it you played an important role as the world telecommunication policy forum a day was allocated for the fact to say how important broadband is to the nation and as we know that one of the themes again of the ITU connecting the world is the ICT for all and as we all know that we are moving from the age of information to age of knowledge so broadband is very important and this is why this plan came about this national plan came about so ICT knowing all these and the fact that we are working very hard towards achieving the broadband goals and the ICT for all I think the role of ICT is quite important with regard to the regulations and supporting the operators and guidance which has to be performed and we are I think ICT is doing that but certainly one of the importance of the plan is that it has to be regarded that in that forum in that international forum it was debated with the broadband now as important to individual as gas, electricity water, energy and now it has become true we have to we have to to move to the age of knowledge then broadband has to reach every household and this is the plan which indicates it one of the most important area of the plan so the ICT should row his that to encourage and give the guidance to the operators and individuals and public awareness that availability of broadband is very important and I think that they are collaborating and I think that it will be achieved Excellent, thank you Haishim I think at this point I'll just like to give some final comments I think Blair set the scene very well with regards to his message about execution we've seen a number of national broadband plans that are very high level we have attempted in this one for Qatar to produce a range of tangible policy actions with clear dates and targets and clear next steps and I do think that that will set Qatar up very well to take this plan from a concept into a reality I think we are close to our allotted time so I think we will look to draw this panel to a close now it's been a very interesting first discussion I hope you'll agree and it sets the scene really for the remainder of the day which moves more from the infrastructure side into the demand side so I hope you enjoyed this first set of discussions please join me in thanking all of our panellists for taking part in this session