Telecom providers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia increasingly see AI-driven network services as a direct source of future revenue, according to a new Ciena survey conducted by Censuswide.
The research found that 96% of UAE respondents and 90% of Saudi respondents expect high-capacity AI network services to become a primary driver of new revenue over the next three to five years. It surveyed 100 service provider experts in each market as part of a 12-country study involving 1,200 respondents.
UAE providers reported greater urgency around network investment. Some 97% said optical network upgrades are urgently needed to support enterprise AI service-level agreements, compared with 86% in Saudi Arabia.
Confidence in managed optical fibre network services is also high, with 97% of UAE and 96% of Saudi respondents expecting them to generate revenue from connecting distributed AI compute clusters over the next three years.
Saudi providers showed stronger expectations around AI inference. Some 58% expect AI inference data centres to increase demand for data centre interconnection services, compared with 37% in the UAE and a 49% global average.
Strategic partnerships with cloud and neocloud providers were viewed as essential to capturing GPU-as-a-service revenue by 96% of UAE and 91% of Saudi respondents. The survey also found UAE providers further ahead on quantum-safe encryption, while Saudi providers placed greater emphasis on AI inference and sovereign infrastructure.
Source: Middle East AI News
