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Cisco to Asharq Al-Awsat: AI Boosts Wireless Network Value in Saudi Arabia

Cisco report shows wireless networks in Saudi Arabia are no longer just connectivity infrastructure, but a driver of business growth toward 2030 (Shutterstock)
Cisco report shows wireless networks in Saudi Arabia are no longer just connectivity infrastructure, but a driver of business growth toward 2030 (Shutterstock)
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Cisco to Asharq Al-Awsat: AI Boosts Wireless Network Value in Saudi Arabia

Cisco report shows wireless networks in Saudi Arabia are no longer just connectivity infrastructure, but a driver of business growth toward 2030 (Shutterstock)
Cisco report shows wireless networks in Saudi Arabia are no longer just connectivity infrastructure, but a driver of business growth toward 2030 (Shutterstock)

A new report by Cisco shows wireless networks in Saudi Arabia are no longer just a connectivity layer. They are a direct driver of performance and growth.

The study draws on responses from 6,098 decision-makers and technical specialists across 30 markets, including 106 organizations in the Kingdom, giving its local findings added weight in tracking shifts in digital work environments.

Networks create value

The numbers point to a clear shift. More than 83% of organizations in Saudi Arabia reported improved customer engagement after investing in wireless networks, while 78% saw gains in operational efficiency. Some 75% cited higher employee productivity, and 67% reported a positive impact on revenue.

The findings show organizations are treating wireless networks as a business driver, not a background support layer.

Tarik Al-Turki, director of solutions engineering at Cisco Saudi Arabia, said companies now expect wireless networks to do far more than connect users. They are being pushed to support artificial intelligence workloads, the Internet of Things, hybrid work, real-time collaboration, and always-on customer experiences.

Wireless networks, he said, have become a “strategic platform” that enables flexibility, innovation, and the scaling of digital services, in line with Saudi Arabia’s accelerating digital transformation.

Rising operational strain

The gains come with mounting pressure. The report highlights what Cisco calls the “AI paradox in wireless networks”, where artificial intelligence boosts returns but also raises complexity, security risks, and talent challenges.

All surveyed organizations in Saudi Arabia said wireless operations have grown more complex. Around 63% still spend most of their time fixing issues after they occur, while 86% reported visibility gaps that hinder effective Wi-Fi troubleshooting.

Al-Turki said the problem is not just scale, but how networks are run. Many organizations still rely on manual, reactive approaches, while modern wireless environments demand proactive management, AI-driven automation, and end-to-end visibility.

Modernization, he said, is not only about spending more, but about rethinking how networks are managed.

Security risks escalate

Security is a major concern. In Saudi Arabia, 84% of organizations said they faced at least one wireless-related security incident in the past 12 months.

About 60% reported financial losses, with 51% of that group saying losses exceeded $1 million. Some 35% said breaches involving IoT or operational technology devices caused disruptions.

These figures show wireless security is no longer a theoretical risk, but a direct operational and financial threat.

Al-Turki said vulnerabilities are expanding with the growth of AI, IoT, and operational technology. More connected devices mean a wider attack surface, especially in distributed and critical environments.

He said the challenge is compounded by limited visibility, uneven security enforcement, and unmanaged or weakly protected devices. He also warned of growing concerns over automated and AI-driven cyberattacks, which increase both the speed and complexity of threats.

Traditional perimeter-based security, he said, is no longer enough. Organizations need models built on segmentation, continuous monitoring, identity-based access, and rapid response.

Talent gap widens

The talent shortage is another pressure point. The report found 91% of organizations in Saudi Arabia struggle to hire specialized wireless networking professionals.

The impact is clear. Around 40% reported higher operating costs, while another 40% cited lower morale. Some 28% said the skills gap is limiting innovation.

The report noted that many specialists are shifting toward AI and cybersecurity roles, intensifying competition for talent needed to manage modern wireless environments.

Al-Turki said the gap reflects a deeper shift. Wireless teams are no longer focused only on connectivity, but must also handle automation, security, AI-driven operations, IoT and operational technology, and user experience.

The market, he said, lacks hybrid skill sets capable of operating across these areas. More advanced organizations treat wireless expertise as a long-term strategic capability, not a narrow technical role.

AI, solution and risk

The report does not present AI only as a source of complexity. It can also reduce it, if used within a clear operating model.

Al-Turki said AI adds value by reducing manual work, improving visibility, and shifting teams from reactive fixes to proactive management. That includes earlier detection of issues, faster root-cause analysis, improved network performance, and actionable insights before users are affected.

This matters given that 63% of organizations still rely on reactive processes, while 86% face visibility gaps.

Returns depend on execution

Al-Turki warned that adopting AI without a clear model can backfire, creating more tools, alerts, and complexity.

The report suggests AI’s value lies in how it is used, not simply in deploying it. Poor integration can turn a tool meant to simplify operations into a source of noise.

He said simplifying operations, strengthening security, and building skills are interconnected priorities that must move together.

The broader picture is clear. Wireless investments are delivering gains in engagement, efficiency, productivity, and revenue, but environments are becoming harder to manage, more exposed to risk, and more dependent on specialized skills.

Returns, the report shows, depend not just on connectivity and speed, but on an organization’s ability to turn wireless infrastructure into a stable, secure, and scalable platform.

In Saudi Arabia, wireless networks now underpin connected work environments, AI applications, IoT systems, and customer-facing digital services. They have moved from technical infrastructure to a core driver of performance.

But the report makes clear that deployment alone is not enough. Organizations must simplify operations, strengthen protection, and build the skills needed to manage networks that are now central to growth, resilience, and competitiveness.

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Technology

Huawei Bets on Speed Over Shrinking Transistors to Sidestep US Chip Sanctions

A logo for Huawei is seen during the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in Paris, France, March 20, 2024. (Reuters)
A logo for Huawei is seen during the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in Paris, France, March 20, 2024. (Reuters)
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Huawei Bets on Speed Over Shrinking Transistors to Sidestep US Chip Sanctions

A logo for Huawei is seen during the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in Paris, France, March 20, 2024. (Reuters)
A logo for Huawei is seen during the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in Paris, France, March 20, 2024. (Reuters)

Huawei's new chip design principle focused on boosting transmission speed rather than continuing to shrink semiconductors offers a path for China to build cutting-edge chips despite US sanctions, though whether it represents a true breakthrough remains to be seen.

China has been barred since 2019 from importing ASML's most advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, curbing the ability of its chipmakers to keep up with global leaders like Taiwan's TSMC in relying on ever-smaller manufacturing processes that make chips more powerful.

For decades, the semiconductor industry has been governed by Moore's Law - the observation that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles roughly every two years.

Huawei this week unveiled an alternative approach: cutting the time signals take to move through chips and larger computing systems using a principle it calls the Tau Scaling Law.

Its central technique, LogicFolding, aims to arrange logic, analogue and memory circuits in stacked, more tightly connected structures, potentially improving density, efficiency and clock speeds over the next decade.

Proponents see it as ‌a way to ‌extend chip progress as manufacturing advances begin to slow.

"For Huawei, chips face two key constraints. ‌One ⁠is inevitable that Moore's ⁠Law will hit a physical 'wall' within the next decade," He Tingbo, the president of Huawei's semiconductor business, told China's People's Daily this week.

"The other is accidental because of the external restrictions that Huawei encountered this 'wall' earlier than its peers," she said, in a likely reference to US sanctions on importing advanced EUV machines.

But others argue that reducing latency has always been part of semiconductor design and that many of the underlying ideas resemble existing work in three-dimensional (3D) stacking, advanced packaging and system optimization.

"This is a breakthrough for Huawei, but it's not a threat for TSMC," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told reporters in Taipei on Thursday. "TSMC has been using die stacking and 3D packaging for how long now? Almost ⁠10 years. And so TSMC's technology is very advanced."

NOT A NEW CONCEPT?

In the race to ‌build more powerful computing systems, the chip industry has already embraced advanced packaging technologies ‌that stack chips vertically.

TSMC has been at the forefront with its packaging technology called SoIC, which enables more tightly integrated heterogeneous chiplets to reduce ‌size and improve performance.

Memory chip makers such as SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics also use advanced 3D stacking and packaging technologies ‌to produce multi-layer memory chips, a key component of AI chipsets, and to improve power efficiency and performance.

Huawei believes LogicFolding may actually go beyond the techniques commonly used in 3D integrated circuit stacking, thanks to "very finely and carefully split the critical paths of logic circuits across multiple layers," according to Liao Heng, chief scientist at Huawei Semiconductor.

But Bernstein analysts cautioned in a note that while stacking multiple chip layers boosts transistor density, it also increases power ‌density and risks overheating chips. Production yields and costs will be another barrier for adoption, they added.

Huawei's own roadmap also points to those challenges. Huawei's He said the approach would require ⁠new semiconductor design tools suited to ⁠folded chip architectures, as well as better ways to manage heat across devices ranging from smartphones to large AI data centers.

"With the methodology of not optimizing the area on a chip level, but on a system level based on time, that will dramatically change the capability requirements for the EDA (electronic design automation) vendors," said Handel H. Jones, CEO of International Business Strategies, during a panel discussion on Tau Scaling on Tuesday.

Mainstream EDA software produced by vendors like Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys plays a crucial role in creating blueprints for sophisticated semiconductor devices.

EYES ON NEW KIRIN CHIP

Huawei's most concrete claims centered on a new Kirin smartphone chip that will be launched later this year, which would be the first to use its LogicFolding architecture.

Compared with its earlier single-layer design, the new chip would improve power efficiency by 41%, and raise the chip's peak operating speed by nearly 13%, Huawei's He said in a speech on Monday.

Those figures would be significant if achieved at commercial scale. But Huawei did not provide production yield information, cost comparisons or a clear explanation of how the gains would compare with rival chips made using more advanced process nodes.

"There's nothing concrete that can be independently verified or benchmarked against other players at the moment," said Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at tech research firm Omdia.

Technology

Humanoids Dance and Thread Needles as Japanese Robotics Developers Look to Outdo Chinese

A humanoid robot poses for photo at the Humanoids Summit 2026 in Tokyo, Thursday, May 28, 2026. (AP)
A humanoid robot poses for photo at the Humanoids Summit 2026 in Tokyo, Thursday, May 28, 2026. (AP)
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Humanoids Dance and Thread Needles as Japanese Robotics Developers Look to Outdo Chinese

A humanoid robot poses for photo at the Humanoids Summit 2026 in Tokyo, Thursday, May 28, 2026. (AP)
A humanoid robot poses for photo at the Humanoids Summit 2026 in Tokyo, Thursday, May 28, 2026. (AP)

Mechanical hands dexterous enough to thread a needle, childlike dancing robots and adult-sized ones to help with deliveries were on display Thursday as the Humanoids Summit Tokyo opened.

Among the dozens of companies taking part, including well-known players like Boston Dynamics and Toyota Motor Corp., the big stars now were clearly the Chinese.

Chinese newcomers, like Booster Robotics and LimX Dynamics, took the technology initially developed in Japan and the US and fine-tuned it, often for cheaper mass production. It’s a repeat of what happened in other Japanese industries, from consumer electronics to cellphones and electric vehicles. In humanoids, Japan was initially ahead but then failed to produce major commercial solutions.

Tim Hornyuk, author of “Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots,” who was at the event, categorized it as the so-called “Galapagos syndrome,” referring to how innovative Japanese products evolve in isolation and end up not translating for the international market.

“I really hope that Japan can come up with a Ford Model T-version of humanoid roots. But I think China has already stolen their lunch. It’s a bit too little too late,” he said.

The dancing and wiggling Mini Pi Plus robot from High Torque of China, for instance, still can’t help at an auto plant or do your dishes. But it’s cute. And it doesn’t come with an eye-popping price tag, starting at $5,500.

One telling example of Chinese robotics use in Japan was GMO, a Tokyo-based AI and robotics company working on a humanoid with camera eyes that will help with Japan Airlines cargo and other chores at an airport.

The key is to have the robot do the work in the same way as people so they would be interchangeable, an initiative meant to tackle the labor shortage problem that is increasingly serious in Japan.

The inner robotics workings were all courtesy of Unitree, a Chinese outfit, which is also working on a four-legged dog-like “stellar explorer.”

Experts say Japan, with its finesse in manufacturing, proved a good breeding ground for robotics development. The sociological backdrop of a public receptive to robotics also helped.

A recent Pew global survey showed that people in Japan are highly aware of AI but are less anxious about it, at about 28%, than people in the US at 50%.

Japanese automaker Honda Motor Co., a leader in robotics with its walking humanoid Asimo, first shown in 2000, was demonstrating a motorized four-fingered robotic hand that could screw on and off tiny bolts, or thread a needle.

It didn’t seem to bother Keisuke Tsuta, assistant chief engineer, that similar mechanical hands were on display galore near his booth, many of them from Chinese makers.

Japanese robotics show their prowess

The technology Honda had developed is more durable and powerful than rival offerings, and the Japanese have historically shown they can excel at quality mass production, according to Tsuta.

The looming threat of a Chinese robotics domination didn’t seem to phase Osaka University Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, who has worked on humanoids for decades, including one that’s his clone.

“What’s significant is that Japan has a culture that’s receptive to robotics. If we’re going to really start using robots in society, Japan is the ideal place,” he said, stressing that Japanese don’t discriminate against robots.

His robotic counterpart, dressed all in black like the professor, did as good a job, if not better, of answering a key existentialist question on the meaning of robots.

“I think robots will coexist with people. Robots are the mirror of human beings,” the robot replied in a slightly monotonous but human-like voice.

Earlier, the professor had answered a similar question, but a bit differently.

“No one is interested in me. All everyone cares about is my robot,” he said, sitting next to his twin-like humanoid.

“As long as people identify with what I have produced, I am a success,” he added.

Technology

Introducing Argus, a Robot with 20 Legs and Eyes Built to Move and See in Any Direction Instantly

Jiaxun Liu, a PhD student, works on a robot named Argus at Duke University's General Robotics Lab in Durham, NC, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP)
Jiaxun Liu, a PhD student, works on a robot named Argus at Duke University's General Robotics Lab in Durham, NC, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP)
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Introducing Argus, a Robot with 20 Legs and Eyes Built to Move and See in Any Direction Instantly

Jiaxun Liu, a PhD student, works on a robot named Argus at Duke University's General Robotics Lab in Durham, NC, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP)
Jiaxun Liu, a PhD student, works on a robot named Argus at Duke University's General Robotics Lab in Durham, NC, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP)

A robot being developed at Duke University is almost ready to face the world, in any direction.

Instead of trying to copy symmetrical shapes from nature by building robots that look like people, dogs or insects, engineering professor Boyuan Chen and his team focused on uniformity in action, or what he calls "dynamic symmetry."

The result was Argus. The roly-poly robot named after a mythological many-eyed giant has depth-sensing cameras attached to 20 telescoping legs that radiate from a central core. With no front, back, top or bottom, it can see and move in any direction instantly.

"Instead of measuring how your legs are arranged around a different part of your body, we’re measuring how fast you can move in any direction," Chen said. "Who said, you know, if you have a robot to help us in a most effective way, it has to look like us?"

In experiments, Argus has navigated sandy beaches and forest undergrowth, rolling over obstacles and stabilizing itself after being pushed. It can climb between parallel brick walls by alternating bracing and thrusting motions with its legs. If one or more motor dies or a leg breaks, it continues to function.

"Watching Argus move is unlike watching any other robot we’ve worked with," said Jiaxun Liu, a graduate student and co-author of a study about Argus published online Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics. "The first time we saw it navigate among trees and rough terrain, even under heavy collisions, we knew this was something different."

As part of their work, researchers developed a new design principle called dynamic isotropy that rates robots on a scale of 0 to 1 based on how uniformly they can accelerate in every direction. Most robots in use today, including humanoids and drones, score below 0.6. Argus scores 0.91.

"When a robot can accelerate equally well in every direction, it stops needing to face the world in any particular way," said Chen, who hopes the same principle could guide the development of search and rescue robots, underwater or aerial vehicles or robots with the ability to grip objects.

"Instead of building a robot hand that looks like a human hand ... one idea is to think about having Argus be the hand itself, and it can manipulate objects in any direction," he said. "The knowledge we can transfer to the rest of the world is much more deeper than building an existing robot or copying an existing species."