#UAE #SaudiArabia #telecom - A new Ciena survey found 96 percent of UAE and 90 percent of Saudi Arabia service providers expect high-capacity AI-driven network services to be a primary driver of net-new revenue over the next three to five years. UAE providers reported greater urgency around network upgrades than their Saudi counterparts, with 97% saying optical network upgrades are urgently needed to support enterprise AI service level agreements, compared with 86% in Saudi Arabia. The research, conducted by Censuswide, surveyed 100 service provider experts in each market as part of a wider 12-country study.
SO WHAT? - Telecom operators across both markets increasingly see AI as a direct revenue opportunity rather than just infrastructure they need to build to support other companies’ AI ambitions. That finding highlights an evolution in how providers think about their own business model. However, there is a gap between the level of urgency felt by UAE and Saudi telcos to upgrade optical networks to meet future AI demand. This suggests the two markets are moving at different speeds on the physical network upgrades needed to actually capture potential future AI revenue.
KEY POINTS:
US optical networking company Ciena has released the results of a new survey of 1,200 telecom Providers, wholesale fiber network operators, and regional service Providers. The survey was conducted by Censuswide across 12 countries: USA, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, UK, UAE, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Australia, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore (100 respondents per market).
Confidence in managed optical fibre network (MOFN) services is strong in both markets, with 97% of UAE and 96% of Saudi respondents expecting MOFN to generate revenue from interconnecting distributed AI compute clusters over the next three years.
Saudi Arabia shows stronger expectations around AI inference specifically, with 58% of respondents expecting growth in AI inference data centres to increase demand for data centre interconnect services, well above the 49% global average, compared with just 37% in the UAE.
Strategic partnerships with cloud and neocloud providers are seen as essential to capturing GPU-as-a-service revenue by 96% of UAE and 91% of Saudi respondents.
The two markets diverge on multi-cloud connectivity: 64% of Saudi respondents see multi-cloud connectivity management as a leading revenue driver, above the 56% global average, while 57% of UAE respondents still favour traditional fixed-capacity services over multi-cloud models, a reversal of the pattern seen elsewhere.
UAE service providers appear further ahead on quantum-safe encryption, with 54% saying they have already launched or expect to launch such services within 12 months, compared with 38% in Saudi Arabia.
Physical AI, including industrial robotics and remote-control systems, is expected to account for more than 15% of total enterprise AI revenue within five years by 52% of UAE and 37% of Saudi respondents.
According to Ciena, UAE providers are treating network upgrades and automation as something to act on now rather than plan for later, while Saudi providers are focused on AI inference, service reliability and sovereign infrastructure requirements.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
Source: Ciena
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