JEDDAH, 13 June — International telephone link between Saudi Arabia and India has been severely hampered for the last couple of days, with many of the calls not getting through at all. Indian expatriates reported major difficulties in getting connected whilst trying to contact families and friends back home.
A source at the Saudi Telecom Company a little reluctantly confirmed yesterday that “there has been a technical problem in the telephone links between Saudi Arabia and India for the last 48 hours or so”.
The cables linking the Kingdom to India are now many years into their projected design life. The increase in telephone and data transmission traffic coupled with the inevitable deterioration of the cables has caused a decline in efficiency.
The source told Arab News that the problems the callers are experiencing are due to the work being carried out to replace the old cables, which were laid years ago, with modern cables, able to cope with the increasing demand.
He explained that Siemens, which has huge experience in undersea cable-laying around the globe, is working on the project. This has necessarily resulted in up to 50 percent of the calls failing to connect. The source also confirmed that the STC is losing nearly SR390,000 a day due to the replacement work and is just as concerned about returning to full operating efficiency as the customers are.
Some 60,000 calls are made to India a day and the need to restore communications is being given top priority.
Meanwhile, 16 executives of Internet Service Providers met in Riyadh yesterday to discuss strategies to confront STC’s plan to provide Internet service through SaudiNet, a newly formed subsidiary of the STC.
