Market Studies
Middle East/Africa: SDH and Beyond

Middle East/Africa: SDH and Beyond is Volume 4 of the 4 Volume series titled "World Fiber Optics Telecommunications Series." Volumes 1-4 are listed below.

Published: August 1998

$995 - Print copy
$3495 - All Four Volumes,
Overview:
Many countries in the Middle East are putting in fiber and SDH equipment. For longer distances and metropolitan areas such as Cairo, WDM may be the better choice. Some of the Gulf States have very sophisticated networks, and pagers and cellular phones are quite prevalent. Other countries have suffered from internal feuds, lack of funding nd many take longer to participate in global communications. However the demand for telecommunications is so intense that even the most undeveloped countries are focussing on this part of their infrastructure.

Many of the state-owned enterprises are being privatized and telecommunications liberalized. This has led to increased competition and new telecom companies. It is expected the Middle East and African telecommunications market will grow to almost $20 billion by the end of 2000.

A major project announced in early 1998 was a $69 million contract signed by Ericsson and GCC, the Cooperation Council for the ARab States to implement a fiber optic network connecting Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Republics and oman. Ericsson supplied and distributed 1600 km of buried fiber optic cable, fiber optic terminals and systems, SDH transmission systems, multiplexers, microwave links, encryption devices, and a network management system. Services started the end of 1999.

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