JEDDAH, 24 July 2004 — The revolution in communications — the SMS or text messaging service — ground to a halt during the last few days for many people in Saudi Arabia. The reason: There was a breakdown in communication.
The saturation advertising campaign by Saudi Telecom to ensure that mobile phone customers with the “05” prefix on their numbers added an extra “0” after the “5” got through loud and clear. What it didn’t achieve through clarity, it did through repetition. However over the last few days, thousands of customers discovered that they could no longer send SMS messages.
“I thought STC’s system was overloaded because of the number of people visiting Jeddah for summer. We usually have an overloading problem during peak seasons like Haj,” an English teacher said. However, the real reason was discovered to be that the “message center” number that relays messages from phone to phone has been changed.
Some models of mobile phones were automatically updated with the new service center number. Many phones did not receive the update and now require that the service center number be changed manually.
Unfortunately for many customers, no one had told them directly, or even sent them an SMS either in Arabic or English. Some English-speaking expats said that they received a message from Al-Jawal, but because it was in Arabic, it was useless to them. There was an article mentioning the change in Al-Eqtisadiah that printed the new message center number. However, a swift check on a number of automatically updated phones found two numbers — similar, but one digit differentiating them.
“It has caused considerable and unexplained difficulty,” said Miriam, a geriatric nursing sister. She said that the service becomes part of daily life and unexplained or unannounced withdrawal causes problems.
“It is a useful service — particularly as I need to send messages to family abroad across a six hour time difference. At least they can pick them up when I am out of contact. These last few days have been very difficult.”
A search of the STC website —www.stc.com.sa — revealed nothing about the change in either Arabic or English and the “Contact us” option failed to work when an e-mail inquiry was attempted last night.
To update your phone, the procedure for the Nokia 6310i — it may be slightly different for other makes of phone — is this: Locate the number for the Message Center by choosing the “Messages” menu and on the sub menu locating “Message Settings.” Select “Sending Profile” and then “Default Profile,” then “Message Center Number.” The new number is 00 966 5050 31999. On some phones the number reads 00 966 5050 32999 — just one digit different. The latter number seems to work even though it was the former that was printed as the correct number.
