Telecom Leaders at LEAP 2026 to Discussed Broadband Experience for the AI Era

At the Smart Cities Track of LEAP 2026, A Panel Titled Redefining Home Broadband in AI Era; a discussion between MCIT, stc, Dawiyat, ETSI, and WAA to explore Saudi Arabia’s smart home future

Ain Alalam – Rashad Iskandrni

During LEAP 2026, a distinguished panel of government and industry leaders took place to explore how advanced ICT infrastructure serves as the primary enabler for Saudi Arabia’s future smart cities. Under the title of “Redefining Broadband Experience in AI Era”

The session brought together key voices shaping the Kingdom’s connectivity landscape to examine how broadband infrastructure must evolve to meet the demands of AI-powered smart homes and cities. Ahmad El Chami, Chief Advisor of Huawei, joined Dr. Mohammad Al Zeer General Manager of Infrastructure Quality of Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), Mr. Ali Al Bassam General Manager of Consumer Fiber Business of stc, Mr. Salah Al Saeed Chief technology Officer of Dawiyat Integrated Telecommunications, Dr. Marcus Brunner Vice Chair of the ETSI F5G, and Dr. Crane Yang of the World WLAN Application Alliance (WAA), to explore the technologies and frameworks that will define the next era of smart home connectivity.

The discussion drew attention to the key requirements for enabling smart homes infrastructure through providing stable high Quality broadband connectivity, Dr. Mohamad Al Zeer Highlighted the broadband leadership framework for Broadband Quality which involved three key pillars

• Broadband entry speeds: higher speeds are foundation for experience
• Wi-Fi Generation: Newer Wi-Fi means higher experienced speed especially most smart home application requires stable and high-quality Wi-Fi
• Wi-Fi as a Service: in other word its Wi-Fi assurance which is guaranteeing the Wi-Fi coverage and experience across a smart home.

   The discussion brought attention to Saudi Arabia’s entry-level speeds that are actively progressing from 100 megabits per second to a 300 megabits-per-second baseline, with infrastructure now in place to push toward 500 megabits and then to full gigabit speeds nationwide as a basic speed for smart home broadband requirements in near future. As highlighted by MCIT and Dawiyat, nationwide infrastructure is rapidly evolving to support gigabit speeds, with networks now ready to cater to this demand at scale, providing the fundamental backbone required for Saudi Arabia’s Smart City ambitions.

Insights shared by ETSI and WAA highlighted that low latency and service-level agreement (SLA) matching inside the home are becoming just as critical as raw bandwidth. The panel noted that Saudi Arabia’s providers have already adopted Wi-Fi 6 as the standard this year, with Wi-Fi 7 set to become the minimum requirement from next year onward.

On the commercial side, stc’s vision reflected a broader industry shift toward managed indoor Wi-Fi, or Wi-Fi as a Service (WaaS). The firm is actively exploring a range of solutions designed to assure connectivity quality not only at the entry point or main home router, but at every point across the home’s internal network. Ahmad El Chami, Chief Advisor of Optical Industry, Huawei, added: “Wi-Fi as a Service relies on two pillars of assurance: first, having the end-to-end stable connectivity required to deliver broadband speeds; and second, ensuring the wired infrastructure is in place to enable that speed at any point in the home. These factors combined make interconnectivity in smart cities simpler, faster, and easier.”

The strategic dialogue at LEAP 2026 underscores the deep-rooted collaboration within Saudi Arabia’s ICT ecosystem, where government and industry leaders are working closely to advance the sector. This unified approach is critical to enabling the smart cities envisioned under Saudi Vision 2030 and the MCIT’s “10G Society” initiative. Huawei is proud to work alongside Saudi telecom providers to ensure the underlying network is engineered and upgraded according to best practices, especially as AI adoption accelerates in the years ahead.