Zain Omantel International (ZOI), in partnership with Zain Kuwait, has enabled a Guinness World Record-breaking remote robotic surgery spanning 12,000 kilometres between Kuwait and Brazil, demonstrating the power of ultra-low latency digital infrastructure in advanced healthcare.
Working alongside Kuwait’s Ministry of Health, Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital, the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS), and international medical partners, the teams enabled surgeons in Kuwait to operate on a patient in Brazil in near real time. The procedure marked the longest distance ever recorded between a surgeon and a patient during live robotic surgery.
ZOI delivered the international transport network between Kuwait, Marseille, and São Paulo (Equinix SP4), while Zain Kuwait provided the local access connectivity. The purpose-built network achieved end-to-end latency of 199 milliseconds, average bandwidth of 80 Mbps, and packet loss of just 0.19 percent—performance levels critical for precise robotic control over such distances.
The record was formally recognized during a ceremony at Zain Kuwait’s headquarters, where Guinness World Records certificates were presented to the Minister of Health, the surgical team, Zain, and KFAS. Officials confirmed that teams at Jaber Al-Ahmad Hospital in Kuwait and SCOLLA at Hospital Cruz Vermelha in Brazil had successfully set the new global benchmark.
The surgery was conducted over a live, resilient global network engineered for predictable latency, with multiple diverse paths available to ensure continuity. The achievement highlights how coordinated local access and international backbone infrastructure can safely support complex, latency-sensitive medical applications at a global scale.
