e&, the Abu Dhabi-headquartered telecoms group formed from Etisalat, used Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona to announce the selection of BroadForward's Security Edge Protection Proxy for its 5G networks, a security layer protecting 5G roaming traffic between operator networks. The announcement, made through the GSMA's membership channels during the March 2-5 congress, extends e&'s multi-year programme of hardening network signalling as 5G traffic grows.
The deal is small next to the Gulf's AI headlines, and significant for what it signals: Gulf operators now set network-security standards rather than adopt them, and they announce the work on the industry's main stage. For Gulf telecom operators, MWC has become the annual shop window, and e& returned to it as one of the event's anchor international exhibitors.
What a SEPP actually does
Security Edge Protection Proxy is 5G's border guard. When a subscriber roams onto a foreign network, traffic crosses between operators through interconnect points; the SEPP encrypts and filters that crossing, preventing the interception and fraud that plagued older signalling systems, whose weaknesses security researchers demonstrated for years. Deploying one is table stakes for a 5G operator; selecting an independent specialist platform, rather than a single-vendor stack, is the strategic choice e& highlighted.
| Layer | Function |
|---|---|
| SEPP | Encrypts and protects 5G roaming interconnect |
| Signalling firewalls | Filter older-generation roaming abuse |
| Network slicing security | Isolates enterprise and IoT slices |
e&'s wider arc
The operator formerly named Etisalat rebranded as e& in 2022, marking its shift from a national telecom into a technology investor and operator group with interests spanning networks, cloud, fintech and enterprise services across multiple markets. Its UAE network consistently ranks at the top of global speed measures, its capital is central to Abu Dhabi's technology ecosystem, and its consumer brand carries the federation's connectivity story.
Security has moved up the agenda across the group's markets in parallel with the region's 2026 disruption, when network resilience, redundancy and the integrity of roaming traffic stopped being engineering footnotes. Announcements like the BroadForward selection are the visible edge of that operational refocus, as our explainer on the UAE's national technology strategy sets out at the policy level.
The Gulf presence at MWC 2026
e& was not alone. stc, the Saudi operator, Ooredoo and Bahrain's Batelco all exhibited and held partnership sessions at the March 2-5 congress, and Gulf delegations used the week for vendor negotiations on AI radio, cloud-native cores and private 5G for industrial customers, the procurement list that follows every Gulf industrial strategy. ZTE's MoU with Libya's LTT, announced in connection with the event, showed the congress doubling as a deal venue for the wider MENA region.
Gulf operators' quiet decade of network building
What roaming security means for the traveller
The engineering has a passenger-side translation. Every time a phone attaches to a foreign network, signalling crosses between operators carrying identity, location and billing data; a properly deployed SEPP keeps that exchange encrypted end to end, denying the interception points that older generations of roaming protocols tolerated. For the Gulf's enormous traveller and expatriate traffic, millions of roaming sessions daily in peak seasons, the upgrade is invisible until the day it is not, and the region's operators have concluded, correctly, that invisibility is a feature to be engineered rather than a gap to be marketed.
The BroadForward item sits on a foundation worth recalling. Gulf operators spent the 2020s building networks that now rank among the world's best measured: the UAE and Saudi Arabia trade places at the top of global 5G speed and coverage tables, fibre penetration in the Gulf exceeds most of Europe, and the region's operators were early with standalone 5G and carrier-scale fixed wireless. That physical lead is the asset behind every digital-ambition headline, no smart city or AI hub runs on congested spectrum, and it explains why engineering announcements like a roaming-security deployment, unglamorous as they are, carry weight: they harden the layer everything else depends on.
| Operator | Home market | Footprint beyond |
|---|---|---|
| e& | UAE | Asia, Africa, Middle East operations and stakes |
| stc | Saudi Arabia | Regional operations, digital subsidiaries |
| Ooredoo | Qatar | Asia, Middle East, North Africa |
| Omantel, Batelco | Oman, Bahrain | Regional, wholesale and cable stakes |
The group-level stories converge on the same thesis: national champions using strong home economics to buy growth abroad, with the Gulf's operators now among the developing world's most active acquirers of telecom assets. e&'s transformation from Etisalat into a technology investor-operator group is the clearest case, and its Barcelona week, partnerships announced, security upgrades showcased, exhibitions staffed, is the annual progress report on that thesis. The MWC stage is where the region's carriers demonstrate they are no longer attendees at the industry's table but setters of it.
Why network security headlines matter now
For the region's regulators, the same engineering is a resilience file: UAE and Saudi cyber-authority rules now treat interconnect security as critical-infrastructure compliance, and announcements like e&'s are as much audit evidence as marketing.
- Roaming interconnects are state-actor attack surfaces, and Gulf networks carry high-value traffic.
- Enterprise 5G, private networks for ports, oil facilities and logistics, depends on trusted interconnect.
- Regulators in the UAE and Saudi Arabia have tightened cyber-resilience rules for critical operators.
- Vendor diversification, independent security layers over single-stack networks, is now procurement policy across the region's operators.
The honest summary: a proxy selection at a trade show is a modest headline, but it marks the machinery underneath every Gulf connectivity promise, the security engineering that makes 5G roaming, enterprise networks and, increasingly, AI backhaul trustworthy enough to build on.