Local cloud services are being constrained by high bandwidth costs, and telecoms regulation in the UAE needs to take in and consider a more diverse ecosystem, beyond just telecoms operators, according to the CEO of eHosting Datafort (eHDF), Yasser Zeineldin.
He said a fall in bandwidth prices would be a gradual process, because of the high levels of investment the UAE’s operators have put into a small market. But he believes the market needs to see a change.
“We’ve seen in the past the regulators managing that pricing – but it needs, in my view, to be more aggressive, because that can really create the scale you need,” said Zeineldin.
“I think the regulator regulates two operators – it doesn’t look after the whole ecosystem. In a way, the model is not as broad as diversified, in terms of the scope of the regulator. There could be some unfair advantages, for example, for certain cloud providers and smaller companies – the telecoms operators are also getting into that space, providing cloud services, and they could very well have an unfair advantage when it comes to bandwidth,” he added.
He said eHDF was able to match or beat pricing from international players such as AWS and Rackspace – except for customers with extremely high bandwidth demands. He believes lower bandwidth charges would after a certain point bring in more revenue, thanks to increased demand.
But while Zeineldin does see shifts in the market, he does not believe a change is imminent: “I honestly do not see a change happening in the next 12 months. I hope as the ecosystem matures, and it shows the sum of all these parts means a lot more to the economy, you will start to see the wider interest – be it from a consumer standpoint, or SME standpoint – will have a much bigger weight, eventually. When exactly that will be, I can’t really say.”
