The Chief Executive Officer of Etisalat Group, Ahmad Julfar, has urged the adoption of public private partnership (PPP) approach to broadband development, arguing that access to broadband is a basic right for everyone who could be served smartly, where needed.
He lamented that artificial policies of long pay-back on infrastructure investments and diminishing returns impact ability of carriers to invest and innovate
Addressing global leading figures in telecoms at this year’s Mobile World Summit (MWS) by Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Mr. Julfar said public internet needs to evolve further, stressing that it requires investment in capacity, new solutions, technologies and innovative business models.
He argued that the carriers will not be able to drive this alone, as they face the risk of a big disruption due to the shifts across the value chain, necessitating the PPP approach.
He said: “Etisalat believes that access to broadband is a basic right for everyone and it can be served smartly, where needed. But providing universal access to broadband poses a challenge for telcos because network investments not only have long pay-back periods and capex (capital expenditure) on infrastructure today yields diminishing returns.”
Mr. Julfar said “new investment models based on semi-public funding from governments or infrastructure-sharing models defined by regulators, are urgently needed and should be encouraged”.
Speaking on Connecting Billions Across the Developing World, Mr. Julfar said: “The benefits of increasing connectivity are clear to see in economic, social and environmental fields, but there is a clear digital gap. Some 60 per cent of the world’s population remains unconnected, the majority of which is in rural areas of the developing world.”
By 2020, approximately 3.8 billion men and women, or half of the world’s population will be connected to the internet through mobile and a vast majority of the new users will be in developing countries.
“Telecoms revolutionises everything we do; it is the industry that changes all other industries; governments know it. That is why, over the past 10 years, more than 150 governments have developed or are developing national broadband networks. The primary goal is to make the country benefit from the economic impact of broadband. And we share a common interest to keep investing in the future internet,” he said.
He proposed a number of changes in the telecoms ecosystem comprising governments, regulators, internet companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). He urged all to embrace new competitive models to allow telcos focus on market value creation through collaboration between private and public sectors to distribute more choice, affordability and welfare to citizens.
“Some of the most innovative models today come from emerging countries. Etisalat Group takes a different approach in various developing countries that it operates in, and not one size fits all. Our ability to be flexible to meet individual market need drives our growth across the region. This flexible approach has enabled Etisalat Group to extend service provision for millions of people,” he said.
