How have you found the show so far?
It’s been a very busy day so far. We received His Highness Sheikh Mansoor bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum for the opening ceremony, visiting different companies on each booth. He’s the Chairman of Dubai’s Supreme Committee of Crisis and Disaster Management.
A lot of interesting applications have been presented from different companies. There are more than 136 exhibitors from 26 countries, which is good. I think this event is considered to be one of the biggest in the history of Critical Communications World.
We were going to have one hall, but because of the demand, they added another.
The Middle East, and Dubai in particular, seems to be very vibrant in terms of mission critical communications. There’s a lot of interesting work going on.
After Critical Communications World in Madrid, we decided to go ahead and bid for Dubai 2024. Along with our stakeholders like the Department of Economy and Tourism, and Dubai International Convention Centre, we worked on bidding.
TCCA viewed the submissions at the time, and they decided to award it to Dubai. Everybody wants to come to Dubai to present their products, and we’re honoured to have an event of this size here.
I told TCCA that the one in Dubai would be a benchmark. We’re expecting more than 7,000 visitors in three days. We are targeting everybody from different departments to come and see the state of the art applications and products. Plus, this year, we’ve got private commercial operators, like STC in Saudi Arabia.
If you look at the products from the different companies, you’ll see the direction of using new state of the art technologies. For instance, 5G networks, artificial intelligence and edge computing. This is the trend nowadays.
While still relying on TETRA for voice…
Absolutely. TETRA will last. For instance, if you look at Germany, they rolled out TETRA four years ago, because they consider voice as their number one for any crisis.
Companies now have single or unified platforms, which they use for push-to-talk, video calls and broadcasting video files to the dispatchers. It is really another development which has happened in this sector.
Airbus were pioneers in that. We’ve been with Airbus now since 2003 and are continuing with them.
We digitised our infrastructures, the last year or two years. We have the capabilities in Nedaa now, that it all depends on the end user – what it is that they want to do. Whether they can use TETRA handheld, or whether they can use [Airbus’] Agnet applications on smartphones.
This was used successfully during big events hosted by Dubai. For instance, Expo 2020 or COP 28.
We’re now always trying to exceed user satisfaction. Trying to secure new technologies – what are the new things in the market. We’re trying to adapt and make ourselves ready for any request from the users.
That’s absolutely the way it works. We are proactive towards their needs.
You mentioned the expectation that there would be 7,000 visitors at Critical Communications World 2024. Did you reach out mainly to users?
It’s not only from UAE, but other GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries. So, from Kuwait to Oman, Saudi Arabi, Qatar and Bahrain. Travel is only an hour’s flight to Dubai.
