MAKKAH, 31 December 2006 — Here’s a riddle: What is a product being sold by hundreds of men in the holy city that has neither weight nor volume, nor is something you can see, touch or feel, yet brings such happiness, solace and convenience to customers that sellers are making up to 1,000 riyals a day in sales?
Give up?
The answer is time — time on a mobile phone.
“It’s a great idea to sell mobile minutes,” said Al-Haj Ismael Mahmoud, an Egyptian pilgrim, who just paid a man to use his mobile phone to call home for Eid. “It beats standing in a long line for a long time to use a call cabin. These young men make the whole thing much easier.”
Hundreds of men of different nationalities can be seen walking around the Grand Mosque crying out “Jawalaat lilitisal!” (“Mobiles for Calling!”), charging one riyal per minute for domestic calls and different rates for international depending on locations.
Ridah Samaan, a forty-something Sudanese woman, said one thing attracted her to these vendors: Convenience.
“It’s better than dealing with the crowd at the calling booths,” she said. “I just want to make a quick call to my family back home in Sudan for Eid.”
Ahmad Al-Koheily, a twenty-something Saudi hawking his mobile minutes, said the deal seems like a win-win situation since pilgrims seem to be flocking to the service. He said he feels good fulfilling this demand.
“Besides, I’m making an honest buck,” he said, estimating that his daily sales is about SR1,000, including the cost he’s paying the mobile service provider.
Ramadan Al-Sayyed, a fifty-something Egyptian mobile minutes vendor, said the most expensive call he sold was to a South African who paid SR90 to speak to his family back home for about 20 minutes.
“Obviously, there aren’t enough telephone booths for the pilgrims,” he said. “The calling cabins are so few and far that some people aren’t even aware there are any.”
Ameer Arif, a 32-year-old Pakistani vendor, has two phones, one with Mobily and the other with Saudi Telecom — the two mobile service providers in the Kingdom — so that if one service drops out due to high traffic the other is available as backup.
Najla Alauddin, a Moroccan piligrm in her 50s, said she was thrilled to see these vendors selling time.
“I had surgery recently on my knees. It’s hard enough with all this walking. I don’t want to be standing in line forever waiting to make a call,” she said. “One more thing, believe it or not, there’s more privacy.”
Meanwhile, a representative of Etihad Etisalat’s Mobily, said call traffic on their network has been 30 percent heavier than last year with calls to 160 countries. He said the company expanded its network in expectation of this growth. “Mobily installed 200 telecommunication towers in the three holy sites of Arafat, Mina and Muzdalifah, besides 35 movable towers, a first in the Kingdom. The movable towers fixed in trucks can be moved to different locations to follow the movement of the crowds. This method helps boost the Mobily service at areas where there is the likelihood of telecommunication jam and thus guarantee the free flow of telephone calls.”
