Page 36 - Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2016

Qatar has among the highest broadband that it announced the opening of two central
penetration rates in the world, but it lags offices to serve 30 000 businesses and residences
significantly behind leading nations in download in the West Bay area (the business district) of
speeds, with current maximum speeds of Doha. The delay was partly caused by operational
only 8 Mbit/s. In 2011, the Qatari government complexities in the network roll-out – in particular
established the QNBN with a mandate to roll out when re-using Ooredoo’s civil infrastructure.
a nationwide, open-access, high-speed broadband
FTTH network. QNBN won a 25-year licence In 2012 QNBN signed an interim wholesale
from the Telecom Regulatory Authority to carry agreement enabling Vodafone Qatar to use
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out Qatar’s ambitious digital plans, which were the QNBN network to deliver its retail services.
summarized under the Qatar ICT Strategy 2015 Vodafone Qatar has deployed very limited fixed
and further articulated through the Qatar National infrastructure to date, and it relied on QNBN’s
Vision 2030. The aim was to become one of the network outside its original local market. QNBN’s
most well-connected countries on Earth. slow growth, however, affected Vodafone, giving
it a choice of whether to take further potential
The plan called for the wholesale QNBN network action such as lobbying the regulator to force
to have nationwide fibre coverage. In 2012, Ooredoo to give access to passive infrastructure.
Ericsson was selected by QNBN to deploy In the meantime, QNBN connected a number of
the network, with the government retaining government ministries through point-to-point fibre
ownership and responsibility for managing and connectivity, enabling the ministries to benefit
running it – thus making QNBN a public DBO. The from secure high-speed broadband networks.
network was expected to cover 95 per cent of
the households in Qatar, as well as 100 per cent In 2014, Vodafone Qatar reached a non-binding
of the business establishments in Doha, by 2015, agreement to buy 100 per cent of QNBN for QAR
equating to approximately 260 000 connections . 210 million (USD 58 million) . However, this
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QNBN was to focus solely on the deployment of deal was scrapped following a due-diligence and
a passive network, leveraging existing and new negotiation process and QNBN has continued with
infrastructure in Qatar to maximize efficiency and its build-out strategy.
cost-effectiveness.

According to QNBN, typical investors would not 1.4 PPP implementation strategies
be attracted to passive infrastructure because the
return on investment is not that high. As a result, Operators and governments (and, in some cases,
the government invested some USD 500 million in regulators) still use the PPP investment strategies
capital to overcome this expected bottleneck. and models descibed in the previous section
to finance investment in broadband networks,
In 2011, QNBN signed an Infrastructure Access particularly where government intervention is
Agreement (IAA) with service provider Qtel to required. In implementing national broadband
reduce its civil infrastructure building costs. Under PPP projects that include open-access initiatives,
the agreement, Qtel would supply QNBN with however, governments need to take into account
access to ducts and other passive infrastructure several considerations (see Table 1.7).
over the next 20 years . However, Ooredoo, which
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dominates the fixed broadband market, appeared Table 1.7: Requirements for governments to foster
to be aggressively laying fibre in an effort to and secure investment
compete with QNBN’s fibre roll-out. In addition,
Ooredoo seemed to not be giving QNBN access to • Consider local market conditions such as the
its fibre, despite the regulator’s attempts to force level of Internet maturity, operator owner-
Ooredoo to do so. Ooredoo’s lack of cooperation ship structures and the regulatory and market
and roll-out delays hindered the government’s structure.
plans for nationwide fibre coverage by 2015.
• Have realistic and well-defined broadband
QNBN began to roll out fibre infrastructure in objectives with speed and coverage targets.
Barwa City and the Barwa Commercial Avenue
area in August 2012. But it was not until 2013

18 Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2016