Riyadh: Nokia and Zain KSA have successfully completed Saudi Arabia’s first live Cloud RAN site, marking a key milestone in 5G innovation. Conducted between December 24, 2024, and January 26, 2025, the trial leveraged Nokia’s 5G anyRAN (Cloud RAN) solution, achieving peak download speeds of 1.5 Gbps on Zain KSA’s 5G core network.
The Cloud RAN site showcases cloud-native architectures that enhance efficiency, lower costs, and accelerate network expansion, supporting Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation goals. This flexible platform fosters a multi-vendor ecosystem and enables advanced enterprise and private-wireless applications.
Eng. Mohammed AlNujaidi, CTO at Zain KSA, emphasized that this collaboration allows the company to explore new service models, enhance network agility, and support diverse digital use cases.
Mohammad AlTayeh, Head of Zain Group & Zain KSA at Nokia, highlighted that Nokia’s cloud-native approach delivers full performance parity with traditional RAN while paving the way for AI-RAN, Open RAN, and future 6G innovations.
This milestone reinforces Saudi Arabia’s commitment to cutting-edge technology and sets the stage for next-generation connectivity advancements.
