RIYADH, 1 November — The Saudi Telecom Company will reduce international telephone charges to certain countries within days, Al-Watan daily reported yesterday, quoting high-level sources at the company.
The STC had already decided to slash connection charge for mobile phones from SR800 to SR500 and installation charge for ordinary phones from SR500 to SR300 effective from Nov. 3.
STC’s President Khaled Al-Molhem said the decision has been approved by the minister of finance and national economy and the minister of posts, telegraphs and telephones.
“The new charges will be applied for a period of three months for mobiles and six months for landlines,” Molhem said.
With the new reduction, the charge for converting a family mobile to ordinary mobile will be SR100 as the connection charge for family mobiles is SR400 presently.
Saleh Al-Jaser, STC’s marketing manager, said there was no plan at present to cut the connection charge of family mobiles or to add two more international numbers to their pre-programmed eight numbers.
“The new cuts in charges are part of the company’s policy of regularly revising them,” he pointed out. “The company will announce the new charges after the completion of the specific period for reduction,” he added.
At present, there are 2.4 million mobile phone lines in the Kingdom and the company intends to market 1.8 million more lines within the next two years.
The Saudi Telecom introduced mobile phones in 1995 charging SR10,000 for connection. It later reduced the charge to SR3,500, then to SR1,500 before bringing it down to SR800.
The new charge for the installation of an additional line in the same place is SR200 and the service of showing numbers of incoming calls is SR30 for three months.
