Palestine to finally receive 4G rollout, agreement to be settled

Israel has finally agreed to authorize 4G rollout to Palestine, as its latest initiative from the Israeli government to enhance Palestinian daily life.

While the country has already deployed 5G networks to its areas, Palestinian citizens have yet to indulge in the 4G rollout experience, as Palestinian telcos are still operating their services with 3G.

Following a closed meeting held between Israel and Palestinian telecoms, and repetitive complaints from Palestinian officials that Israel has not shown initiative to begin technical discussions until April.

Despite that no official agreement has been made, Palestinian telcos are waiting for clarification regarding the extent of bandwidth to be available, given that a previous Israeli agreement has been rejected by the telcos since Israel offered to provide a modest number of frequencies.

Even if Israel authorizes the agreement, local telecom operators will still need around six months to a year to purchase and import the required equipment for the 4G rollout in rural areas.

In 2018, the Israeli government agreed on the deployment of a 3G network for Palestinian citizens. However, the rollout was confined to the West Bank, given that Israel has not permitted domestic service providers to buy 3G equipment for Gaza, which is still operating on 2G.

The demand has risen from Palestinian to attain 4G networks, as it will heighten the country’s economy, as well as push residents from using Israel cellular networks and focus on local ones instead.

It is worth mentioning that Israeli networks deliver a much higher signal frequency reaching deep into Palestine’s region, in addition to their low-cost effectiveness and faster networks compared to the local ones.

This could potentially raise havoc for Palestine’s telcos as their pricing is too high, a factor led by Israel’s intense restrictions on network frequencies and limitations on towers infrastructure and location.