"The New strategy will focus on the integration of communication services or what is referred to growth efficiency differentiation (GED). Etisalat will utilize its know-how and experience to give Mobily its utmost support in this regard," said Omran in his address during Mobily's "WE CARE" event.

Omran described Mobily as one of the most successful investments for the group, commending the professionalism of Mobily's executive management and its vision that resulted in achieving significant growth for the company with more than SR3 billion net income in 2009.

Mobily successfully completed trials for the coming upgrade of its state of the art evolved high-speed packet access (HSPA+) network testing speeds of 42 megabits per second (Mbps). The 42 Mbps speed, expected to be rolled out in major cities in the interim, will be the first major speed upgrade since Mobily became the first operator in the region to launch HSPA+ toward the end of 2009 at speeds of 21 Mbps, and closed the year with one million customers subscribed to its high-usage bundles, and an overall customer base 18.2 million. Mobily's state of the art High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) network now covers 90 percent of all populated areas in the Kingdom, representing 414 cities, regions and areas, almost giving anyone who needs Internet mobile broadband always-on connectivity.

Mobily's HSPA network has given a much needed boost to household Internet usage in the Kingdom with household penetration rates more than doubling from around 14 percent for end of 2008 results to 32 percent for yearend 2009, according to the Communications and Information Regulatory Commission's annual report.

According to the report, out of 1.41 million wireless broadband subscriptions, one million were on Mobily's network, giving the company a market share of 70 percent market of all wireless subscriptions and 36 percent of all broadband connections in the Kingdom.

Mobily was the first Saudi operator to launch BlackBerry platform to businesses at the end of 2006, and was also the first Saudi operator to bring BlackBerry Internet Service to the masses in mid-2007. The company was also the first Saudi operator to launch Apple iPhone 3G in February 2009.

Omran commended the efforts of the Saudi government in developing the telecommunication. He also highlighted the strong performance of Mobily of which Etisalat owns 27 percent.

Meanwhile, Mobily is sponsoring the "2nd e-Government National Conference" to be held from Sept. 25-29.

Mobily's Chief Business Support Officer Abdul Rahman Ghaleb, and Ali Aal Samaa, director of the Yasser e-Government Program, used an iPad to sign the sponsorship agreement. Abdul Rahman Al-Jaafari, governor of the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), attended the signing along with officials from Mobily and the Ministry of Telecommunications & Information Technology.

Ghaleb added that Mobily's sponsorship of the conference reflects its advanced solutions and applications

Earlier this year, Mobily bagged a huge contract to build, run and operate the second phase of the government secure network (GSN) in the Kingdom. The project will serve a great number of government institutions nationwide. It will also serve the requirements of the e-Government project "Yasser", and will form the backbone of many future e-government projects and services.

Management