French telecom giant Orange hosted the Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology, HE Eng. Yasser ElKady, at its facilities in Paris, France, from July 17-18. Orange hosted the Minister to reinforce its presence in Egypt - a presence of "utmost importance" for Orange's future development in Africa and the Middle East.

Read more: Orange hosts Egypt’s Minister for ICT to reinforce its ties with Egypt

Network softwarization and slicing took centre stage at a 5G workshop and demo day held in Geneva, 11 July 2017, in conjunction with a two-week series of meetings to progress the work of ITU's standardization expert group for future networks, ITU-T Study Group 13 (SG13).

Read more: ITU: New standards and demos of 5G softwarization and slicing

Professional Communication Corporation Nedaa, the Dubai Government security networks provider, has announced that it has signed an agreement with Nokia formally designating Dubai as the headquarters of their pioneering Innovation and Creativity Lab.

Read more: Nedaa and Nokia set Dubai as base of pioneering Innovation & Creativity Lab

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), in cooperation with the Prime Minister's Office, has hosted the first meeting of the Executive Team of Smart Government Services, which emerged from the annual meetings of the UAE Government, launched by H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President and Prime Minister, and Ruler of Dubai. The team is responsible for assessing the smart services situation in the country, their mechanisms, provision channels, and ways to upgrade them with the aim of developing smart government services and enhancing the competitiveness position of the UAE on global level, to reach the desired goal of making the best of these services in order to achieve customers' happiness.

Read more: TRA hosts the first meeting of the Executive Team of Smart Government Services

Dubai is fast moving toward achieving its goal of becoming the world's first government to execute all implementable transactions on blockchain by 2020, an international expert on blockchain has said.

Read more: Dubai moving toward becoming world’s first blockchain powered government by 2020

Social networking colossus Facebook is challenging a gag order from a US court that is currently preventing the organization from talking about three government search warrants. However, Facebook is claiming that the preventative measures implemented by the US court pose a threat to freedom of speech.

Read more: Facebook challenges gag order from US court, saying it poses a threat to free speech

Esri, the global leader in spatial analytics, is partnering with NXN (formerly neXgen), a leading smart city consulting and digital service provider in the Middle East and Africa. Through this collaboration, NXN will augment its Smart City as a Service digital platform with Esri technology to deliver geospatially enabled smart and digital services in real estate and government.

Read more: NXN and ESRI partner to create Smart Cities internationally

Full-fledged 5G is just around the corner, according to Ericsson's latest June 2017 Mobility Report. The acceleration of 5G New Radio (NR) standardization will enable large-scale trials and deployments of 5G in 2019. Thus, the number of 5G subscriptions is forecast to exceed half a billion by the end of 2022.

Read more: 5G subscriptions to surpass half a billion by 2022

The Middle East market is primed for the upcoming wave of digital growth.  Key digital growth levers already in place, such as a growing base of mobile subscriber, increasing data connectivity, as well as young and a tech savvy millennial population hungry for digital content.

Read more: The Digital Explosion: How VAS Business Aggregators are reshaping content for the Digital Era

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