Qatar’s communications regulator claimed the country’s mobile operators are capable of meeting high data and quality of service demands expected during this year’s World Cup, following an extensive audit of the nation’s networks.

In a statement, Qatar’s Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) said an audit conducted from August to December 2021 indicated Ooredoo Qatar and Vodafone Qatar could maintain a high standard of accessibility and retainability of services offered to consumers, while having the capacity to provide higher download speeds to a “wider environment”.

The audit covered mobile voice calls, SMS and 5G data services, with testing conducted during peak hours of working days on more than 58,000 samples from each provider’s network collected across different areas of Qatar.

It used undefined QoS systems and the latest devices and smartphones to conduct the study.

Clearly, the audit was done with the major-football tournament in mind, which is due to kick-off on 20 November.

mmWave
In preparation for an increase in mobile network usage, the regulator said it has assigned operators with additional 5G spectrum, including mmWave, aimed to “revolutionise the mobile broadband performance in Qatar”.

CRA added it did not conduct an audit to compare or identify which operator had the best network.

In terms of notable statistics, it found on average networks in the country had a maximum downlink throughput of 700Mb/s and 99.9 per cent successful call completion.

According to GSMA Intelligence, the country has 5.3 million cellular connections, with the vast majority (76 per cent) using 4G technology.