In early April GSMA hosted a video conference on focusing on the “Data Privacy Framework in the Arab World”. The meeting convened the leadership teams from mobile operators in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates to continue the discussions held in November 2019 at the GSMA’s Mobile 360 event in Dubai. The video conference was originally planned to be a physical meeting, in Riyadh, but was changed to an online meeting given the COVID-19 situation.
Presentations were received from Fraser Graham and Jade Nester of the GSMA’s Privacy Team, and Richard Chudzynski from PwC Legal in Dubai. The interactive Q&A session that followed (which continued on a bilateral basis in the following days) demonstrated the importance of this subject and the interest around it.
The knowledge sharing was clearly welcomed by participants, with next steps for the GSMA team being to bring Policymakers and MNOs together to keep the dialogue moving forwards. Despite this being an online meeting, attendance was high and there was active participation from the attendees.