e& UAE and Ankabut have renewed their partnership to advance AI-ready connectivity for the UAE’s education and research sector. The agreement will strengthen and modernise the secure, high-performance infrastructure that supports the country’s academic ecosystem.

Under the next phase of the partnership, e& UAE and Ankabut will expand capacity for advanced research, cloud connectivity, AI workloads, and collaboration with global research networks. As a result, academic institutions across the UAE will gain dedicated, high-capacity digital pipelines built to run compute-intensive AI workloads.

The collaboration is designed to build a secure, resilient, and ultra-high-performance digital foundation for the education sector. Consequently, it aims to support the growing demand for artificial intelligence, advanced research, and high-performance computing across universities and research institutions throughout the UAE.

Abdulla Ebrahim Al Ahmed, Chief Government & VVIP Relations Officer at e& UAE, said digital transformation in education requires solutions that go beyond traditional network infrastructure. According to him, e& UAE is serving as the architect of this secure and scalable AI-ready foundation. He added that by integrating Ankabut’s educational network with e&’s connectivity and local AI hyperscalers, the partnership creates a catalyst for home-grown innovation. He also noted that the private education network will give academic institutions sovereign, secure access to advanced AI tools and collaborative platforms.

Meanwhile, as AI adoption accelerates across education, institutions increasingly require more than standard commercial internet connectivity. Instead, they need a high-capacity network capable of supporting complex AI model training, deep learning inference, and large-scale data modelling.

To meet this need, the new private education network will function as a dedicated “digital expressway.” This setup helps reduce network congestion, bandwidth constraints, and latency. In turn, it allows campuses to connect directly with local AI hyperscalers and large-scale cloud environments, enabling researchers to process complex datasets with greater speed and reliability.

Tarek Jundi, CEO of Ankabut, said the sector is witnessing the next evolution of research. He explained that as high-performance computing and data-intensive collaboration become central to modern knowledge, the goal is to move beyond simply connecting institutions and instead build the digital backbone for secure, sovereign data research. He added that this collaboration marks a step forward in strengthening the country’s long-term research capabilities.

Furthermore, the partnership extends connectivity to leading international research and education networks. This allows UAE-based academic institutions to collaborate on international research initiatives using Ankabut’s National Research and Education Network (NREN) for high-performance data exchange. Beyond dedicated and secure access between UAE institutions, Ankabut’s NREN now also orchestrates connectivity to global partners and UAE cloud service providers.

In line with the UAE’s National AI Strategy and broader digital transformation agenda, this partnership supports AI transformation in education through future-ready digital infrastructure. Overall, e& UAE and Ankabut are not only modernising campus networks but also building the technical framework needed to fuel innovation and reinforce the UAE’s position in AI, research, and innovation.

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