Arab society is starting to deploy fiber optics. The IBC company has begun deploying in Ebalin in the north, and it will most likely be the first Arab settlement to be fully deployed. Recently, representatives of the Ministry of Communications, together with the Director General of the Ministry of Finance, Ram Blinkov, visited the settlement and observed the infrastructure deployment works. According to the head of the council, Mamon Sheikh Ahmed, this is good news after years of limited communication infrastructure.
The deployment of IBC in Ebalin is part of the company’s winning of the incentive tenders of the Ministry of Communications in the Arab society, and the work there is done by the United company as a contractor fromsleep. This is a locality of about 5,000 households, and it is spread entirely over Bezeq’s overhead infrastructure – due to the lack of underground infrastructure in the locality.
These days, the engineering works have been completed, and now they are starting to connect the first customers in their homes, and this is at the same time as the start of work in additional Arab settlements that will be deployed by IBC and other companies.
The IBC model allows any provider to connect to its network, and for customers to choose between them. This enables competition between the providers, and it is estimated that this will also encourage content companies from the Arab society to enter the picture. The fact that the fiber network allows many parties to act on it and reach customers directly, could lead to TV players providing services over the Internet instead of via satellite, as is done today.
We will emphasize that in Arab society there is a serious problem of poor communication infrastructures. Although there are communication services that Bezeq provides, as the only company widely deployed there, the problem is that the policy of the Ministry of Communications released it from the obligation to deploy fiber in a universal deployment – and in its place brought in competing companies through tenders.
The big question is not what will happen with companies such as IBC, which won the tender: the big companies will undoubtedly know how to meet the deployment commitment. The problem is expected to arise from the small contractors that the state has pledged to subsidize in exchange for deployment in these areas, and it is not clear how well they will be able to meet the task – considering that providing service in the communications market is complex and complicated.