Zain Omantel International – CEO executive interview

In this interview, Zain Omantel International CEO Sohail Qadir outlines how the joint venture is scaling Omantel’s established wholesale capabilities across Zain’s regional footprint, combining Omantel’s infrastructure and wholesale expertise with Zain’s subscriber base and presence across multiple markets. He highlights strong revenue growth, with the business expanding from around $150m in 2024 to close to $400m in 2025, supported by mobility, roaming and the monetisation of submarine cable and terrestrial network assets. The discussion also covers a five-year capex programme of roughly $750m, including new cable systems, terrestrial corridors and eight connected data centres designed to support rising cloud and AI-related demand. Qadir emphasises Zain’s neutral wholesale model, regional network continuity and growing hyperscaler relationships, while noting that investment is increasingly supported by internal cash generation, debt financing and pre-sold capacity. Longer term, the focus is on delivering this infrastructure, expanding data-centre capacity and building an end-to-end regional connectivity platform.

Zain Omantel International (ZOI) is a joint venture between Zain Group and Omantel, established to combine and monetise their international wholesale telecoms assets and capabilities across the Middle East and beyond. Zain Group holds a 74% stake in ZOI, while Omantel holds 26%. Through its 21.9% stake in Zain Group, Omantel’s effective economic interest in ZOI is approximately 44%.