RIYADH, 21 September 2006 — A third mobile phone company will be launched in the Kingdom at the turn of the new calendar year.
Jameel Mulla, minister of telecommunications and information technology said here yesterday “The license to commission a third mobile phone company is expected at the beginning of the next year. We are very sorry for the delay.” The minister also said a new fixed telephone line is expected to be launched after adding the necessary technical installations related to frequency spectrum in a couple of months.
In another development Mobily, announced that it is introducing a platform to support Blackberry personal communication devices in the Kingdom, a press release from Saudi Arabia’s second telecommunications company stated on Tuesday.
Blackberry devices, which look like hand-held, palm-sized laptop computers complete with a qwerty keyboard, have been used for years in the United States and Europe. Blackberry devices offer email, phone, SMS, Internet and corporate data applications. The newest model, the 8700g, includes Bluetooth.
Khaled Al-Kaf, CEO of Mobily said in a press statement that “We have launched the Blackberry on the 2.5G sets and we will be one of the earliest to offer Blackberry on the 3G mobile phones as well. While we aim to introduce more features on the 3Gs shortly, we have several surprises in store for Saudi subscribers in the immediate future. Our strategy includes building an integrated network for all our application so that a subscriber enables to switch between Internet, Mobily network, landlines and television networks simultaneously.”
Al-Kaf added that Mobily is the largest 3G network with 4 million subscribers.