RIYADH, 4 September 2003 — A senior executive of the Saudi Telecom Company has said that there has been no change in the rates for international text messaging sent by prepaid SAWA cards. Customers were baffled yesterday to discover an increase from 50 to 70 halalas per international text message.
Saleh Al-Jasser, STC’s general manager for marketing, said the rates remained the same at 50 halalas for national and 70 halalas for international messages.
But he explained that in the past the company’s billing system was unable to distinguish between national and international messages. “Now that it has been upgraded, the subscribers are being charged the specified rates, which were fixed in April 2002,” Al-Jasser said.
Callers are also complaining of a tendency on the part of some call cabin operators not to allow discounted rates on international calls after 8 p.m. Market sources attribute the malpractice to the operators’ failure to upgrade the system. The reason, they say, is that their business has dropped by 50 percent due to the heavy use of prepaid SAWA cards.
