RIYADH, 18 August 2004 — Two Saudi companies, Bayanat Al-Oula for Network Services Consortium and Bayn Consortium (formerly Samawat Consortium), were declared winners of the license for public data communication services out of 11 consortia pre-qualified for the bidding.

The announcement was made at a press conference by Minister of Communications and Information Technology Mohammed Jameel Mulla yesterday. Deputy Governor of Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) for Legal Affairs Awad O. Al-Assaf was also present.

Mulla said the winners of the data services license would bring SR420 million to the government coffers, besides creating 2,000 job opportunities, of which 85 percent would be reserved for Saudis. This was in addition to the fringe benefits in terms of sparking business opportunities for dealers in mobile phones and boosting the demand for maintenance services. All this would translate into a higher growth rate of the GDP.

The announcement came on the heels of the UAE’s Etisalat-led consortium winning the license for the Kingdom’s second mobile operator in a deal worth SR12.21 billion.

Later, speaking to Arab News, Al-Assaf said the selection process was marked by complete transparency and fairness.

According to a recent report from the Riyadh-based Economics Studies House, commissioned by the MTN Group, the penetration rate of mobile phones could grow from the current 32 percent (ITU, 2003) to 60 percent by 2014, with over 20 million subscribers. This would not only require a rapid rollout of capacity to service almost 13 million new lines over the coming nine years, but would also require dramatic increase in network coverage and service availability.

“Saudi Arabia is widely recognized as the largest telecommunications market in the Middle East region. Growth in this sector is currently estimated at about 30 percent per annum. Although it is a large market in terms of the population size and the growth rate, the telecommunications sector lags behind neighboring GCC countries. Mobile subscriber growth has been strong, but penetration is currently low when compared with other countries in the GCC and the wider Middle East region,” noted Dr. Abdulaziz Daghistani of the Economics Studies House.