JEDDAH, 7 June — Muhammad Jameel Mulla, the governor of the newly formed Saudi Telecom Authority, said in remarks published yesterday that his organization would review the charges for various telecom services in the Kingdom.
In a press statement, he said the formation of the authority did not mean abrogation of the Ministry of Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones. The ministry will set out the general policies and plans while the authority will implement them, he added.
“The authority will work to extend the best possible services and achieve competition among companies and protect the rights of all parties,” he said. The formation of the authority’s board of directors and its organizational and administrative structures will be completed shortly. The board will include representatives from the government departments and the private sector.
Mulla said the telecom sector would witness major developments in the coming years and the authority would make use of other countries’ experience in order to increase the revenue.
Mulla, a former undersecretary for technical affairs at the Ministry of PTT, said the authority would regulate the market to make way for healthy competition when the telecom sector is opened up. “We will work to develop the telecom sector in terms of quality and quantity,” he said.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd issued a decree on Tuesday appointing Mulla as governor of the authority.
The Council of Ministers endorsed the rules and regulations of the telecom authority during its last meeting.
The governor said the authority would review the service rates to make them more competitive and reasonable. However, he said the strategy of price cuts should be logical. “We will not be able to sell at SR3 the service which we bought for SR5. We will try to sell it at SR5.5 instead of SR10,” the Okaz Arabic daily quoted Mulla as saying.
High-level sources told Arab News that the Saudi Telecom Company was considering a further 50 percent reduction in connection fee for mobile phones. Charges for ordinary mobiles will be cut from SR800 to SR400 and for family mobiles from SR400 to SR200.
The company is also planning to slash mobile phone call tariff to 50 halalas during peak hours and 25 halalas during off-peak hours. The move coincides with STC’s plan to provide one million new mobile phone connections. Four international companies including Lucent Technologies, Motorola and Ericsson are vying for the contract.
When STC introduced mobile phones in the Kingdom it charged SR10,000 as connection fee which was later reduced to SR3,500, and then to SR1,500 before finally settling at the present rate of SR800.
