At TechHosted08 we inspire and encourage “outside the box” thinking. How different approaches can influence personal and business success, and how you can be part of programs and new technologies that change everyday life and could affect people, like creating applications intended for the entertainment of astronauts, find out from the keynote speaker.

Khalid is a mentor of good ideas, an enthusiast, and an excellent interlocutor for the topics of 5G network adaptation, digital transformation, and design thinking.

Innovations include products, processes, services, and business models and are related to thinking “outside the box” and developing a mindset that can create and follow them.  How does thinking “outside the box” affect your career?

Khaled Mokhtar: During my career, I have been always customer oriented and obsessed with the idea of providing the best and most reliable service to my customers. The outside-of-the-box concept made a lot of impact in my career in providing new, innovative and creative services to my clients. Not only that but suggesting new ways to do old operations always impacted my career positively.

Can you share with us some of your experiences and some of your major successes?

Khaled Mokhtar: One of my major success stories is being part of leading the 4G Program in Egypt, it was new technology and adopting it in the most reliable and efficient way to our customers was very challenging. Yet, once the service was availed, it was a major milestone in my career.

Your biography reveals some interesting things like certificates from Berkeley in Technology Entrepreneurship & Mentoring Innovative Technology Startups, so can you tell us something about your mentoring experiences?

Khaled Mokhtar: I mentored many startups along the way, and also participated in creating lots of programs that help new startups. Major activities were startup weekends and Nasa space apps competitions. Where I helped lots of companies in the area of IoT and Tech solving challenges to our planet and outer space. One of the most beautiful journeys was when I worked with a startup which provides some gaming solutions to astronauts, so they don’t get bored in their outer space journey.  Also, one complex mentorship was about providing internet connectivity to the Hyper Loop trains.

Within a world focused on digitization, how much has the pandemic sped up digital transformation‌?

Khaled Mokhtar: I personally feel that what happened was an acceleration of the already existing plans for digital transformations. Some companies had lots of plans to transform internal services into digital, and other companies had plans to let their employees and consultants work remote and avail remote services, but due to lots of challenges and fears they didn’t apply it. The pandemic obliged leaders and decision-makers to take lots of these decisions and digitize them before they die. Lots of sectors had to transform, especially the learning and education services for example.

When we talk about a digital-first approach and client-centred strategy, what happens to companies that don't have flexible systems?

Khaled Mokhtar: Companies that don’t transform, die. Technology is now faster than anything else, and adoption is no more a luxury, it is a mandate.

The evolution of wireless networks brings with it many challenges. The debut of the Apple 5G gave an additional boost to the new technology, and they estimated that in 2022 the number will reach one billion users worldwide.

However, there are still some limitations to 5G adaptation for enterprises. What do you see as the main problems and what would be the solutions?

Khaled Mokhtar: 5G technology is one of the most challenging technologies that came later. It has 2 major aspects: Business and Technical.

Many companies especially operators can’t afford to transform their whole infrastructure to 5G, which will require a huge amount of investment, thus they started applying the 5G NSA which is partial use of the technology, and not providing the full benefit of 5G so they won the business leadership but they didn’t get the full Technology benefit. So most of their users didn’t feel a lot of change.

Although trials have been ongoing in many operators to apply the 5G partially, only 2 companies had the full application of 5G (Rakuten in Japan and Dish in the US).