Comm. Smart Cities and IoT supplement Smart Cities and IoT | Seite 24

Smart views

Delivering on the digital
lifestyle
Last year Zain Group established the Zain Digital Frontier and Innovation (ZDFI) business
unit, which is charged with expanding the reach of the group into the digital space, and
developing new innovative businesses and income streams. Emre Gurkan, the company chief
strategy and business development officer, addresses the opportunities that the advent of
smart cities, IoT and M2M will present, and Zain’s role in the emerging ecosystem
What does Zain mean when it says it
would like to evolve to become a digital
lifestyle provider?
The telecommunications industry has
been an incredibly successful one, and we
believe it shall continue to be, but we do
have to note that it is changing, and we
need to keep up with the pace of change, if
not inspire it.

Today customers are using their
mobile devices for much more than just
voice calls, and value is being created
through digital service offerings and
applications. So while the business of
providing communications connectivity
has been our industry’s bread and butter,
innovative telcos are also looking to
deliver services beyond connectivity as

Emre Gurkan is Zain Group’s
chief strategy and business
development officer

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this is where a growing amount of value
is being created.
Much of the value that you are
referring to has in fact been created
by companies from outside of the
traditional telecom industry, the so
called over-the-top (OTT) providers.
What is your view on the impact these