RIYADH: Mobile phone group Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) yesterday signed an agreement worth SR375 million ($100 million) with Samsung Electronics for the supply of WiMax technology.
Mobily said the wireless broadband network would be the biggest of its kind in the Middle East.
The agreement is part of the second phase of expansion undertaken by Mobily. Khalid Al-Kaf, Mobily’s managing director and chief executive officer, and Woonsub Kim, executive vice president and head of Telecom Systems Division at Samsung Electronics, inked the agreement at Riyadh’s Four Seasons Hotel.
According to the terms of the deal, high-speed broadband service will be extended to 20 cities in the Kingdom through Bayanat Al-Oula, a subsidiary of Mobily, within a period of nine months. Last year, Mobily acquired Bayanat Al-Oula, a leading Saudi data communication provider and with it continued the expansion of the latter’s WiMAX Wave1 network in the four major cities of Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Alkhobar.
“We understand the anxiousness of consumers and businesses in the Kingdom to get fast and reasonably priced broadband service in a convenient manner,” said Al-Kaf.
“We believe that providing broadband using wireless technology can enable fast delivery of service and as such offer both HSPA-based and WiMAX-based broadband service,” he added.
Branded broadband@home, Mobily’s WiMAX service will not only be the only Wave2-based service in the region, but is already the first prepaid WiMAX service in the Middle East and North Africa region, launched based on WiMAX Wave1 technology in September 2008.