Qatar’s Ooredoo has launched a fibre broadband package aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) under the Business Fibre banner, allowing smaller companies to connect to the internet at speeds that were traditionally restricted to large corporations, at no additional cost. Ooredoo will automatically upgrade and connect all current ADSL broadband customers in the SME segment to its direct fibre network over the coming months, multiplying their speeds by a factor of ten, meaning that subscribers to a 1Mbps plan will be upgraded to 10Mbps, 2Mbps to 20Mbps, and 4Mbps to 40Mbps, with no increase in monthly fees. Business Fibre packages include unlimited monthly data usage (subject to fair usage policy). Ooredoo is deploying Business Fibre on a zone-by-zone basis across Qatar, and plans to connect all its business customers to fibre by mid-2014, as part of a wider plan to cover all homes and businesses by the end of 2014. Having started the commercial rollout of Ooredoo Fibre in 2012, the network has connected more than 60,000 homes.
In addition to offering a direct fibre internet connection, Ooredoo is marketing its add-on services for the business sector, saying: ‘Businesses will also be able to enhance their IT costs by moving their IT infrastructure to the Ooredoo Cloud virtual computing platform, delivering remote back up, and managed voice and support services.’