Haitham Abu-Aisha, CEO and co-founder, Sahara Net, as well as ICT Committee Chairman at the Asharqia Chamber spoke about the difficulties the Kingdom’s consumers and small businesses still face when it comes to securing adequate Internet connectivity. This is despite the fact that it’s been more than a decade now since the Internet became available for personal use in Saudi Arabia. 

“In the past food, water and electricity were considered to be essential expenditures for any family. Now I would add Internet to that. The Internet is not a luxury anymore,” he remarked. “Five years back there was an interview with Engineer Khaled Al-Mulhim, the previous CEO of Saudi Telecom, who became the CEO of Saudi Arabian Airlines. In that interview he was asked why Internet services in the Kingdom are so poor. He answered that, ‘Saudis are using the Internet for chatting.’ He meant that Internet connectivity is something optional. Of course he was widely criticized for such a comment. Unfortunately, the connectivity situation today is still an issue, even though we rely on the Internet even more.”

Abu-Aisha pointed out that Saudi companies use connectivity to run every aspect of their operations from sales applications to online banking. Saudi hospitals transmit medical information to and from specialists around the world. Saudis are better informed because of news websites and social media. The Internet has become an essential part of the social fabric of daily life in the Kingdom.

Abu-Aisha explained that in his executive position he uses the Internet to be more productive, accomplishing much of the day’s “paperwork”  thanks to a virtual office setup in his company. It enables him to handle mundane business activities from the house or car. He can spend just a few hours at his desk in the office and the rest of his day is used for more productive meetings or appointments elsewhere.

“There is an idea that the Internet is something that is of most interest to the young people in the Kingdom. That is incorrect,” Abu-Aisha said. “Local businesses can’t survive anymore without the Internet. And people of every age are very interested in using the Internet to meet their needs. I have an uncle who is over 80 years old. He called me last week and asked me to set up an e-mail address for his use. My father is 75 years old and he sends me at least five e-mails every day. This is how we communicate now — online.”

But the cost of communication is a serious burden for many families. Abu-Aisha feels that as an individual he’s paying much more for Internet  connectivity than he should.

“I have an unlimited mobile Internet subscription of SR350 per month plus my other charges for telephone calls. Add to that the cost of my fixed line at home,” he said. “The government has recently stated that they will pay a minimum monthly salary of SR3,000. Is it reasonable for someone to pay more than ten percent of his salary for an Internet connection?”

There are some people who would think that lower income families should minimize what they spend on the Internet. Abu-Aisha explained that such thoughts go back to the old attitude that the Internet is a luxury. Unlike water conservation, there is no benefit to restricting connectivity. Abu-Aisha wondered if it’s acceptable for some people in our society to be enabled to make good use of the tools the Internet has to offer and yet others are restricted from such opportunities, simply because they cannot afford the high fees for access to an “always-on” connection?

“The worst thing is that even with what we pay for connectivity, generally what we get isn’t good enough,” he observed. “These days there are many bandwidth hungry applications. Hungry applications are those that consume a lot of bandwidth, particularly multimedia. But you can’t expect me to advance in my life with the Internet connectivity that’s currently available. It’s very slow. We hear great plans but somehow we’re always behind when it comes to Internet connectivity. We should be ahead because we have what it takes. We can afford to bring great connectivity to our population. We have a very young population that expects such connectivity. We are educating more and more Saudis on both sides of the equation —  to manage the connectivity and to expect the benefits that great connectivity brings. The strange thing is that with the fees that the telecoms are allowed to charge, and with the fact that everyone’s paying, you’d think they would be very interested in rolling out higher speeds and more and more services as quickly as possible. But that’s not happening.”

Abu-Aisha noted that there have been many delays in the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) project which was supposed to offer Internet speeds reaching 100 megabytes/second. And while many companies are using wireless networks to provide connectivity throughout their workplaces, true seamless connectivity is still the stuff of dreams even in major Saudi cities. Of concern as well to Abu-Aisha is that while Saudis are keen to adopt high tech gadgets and are very interested in ubiquitous connectivity, somehow there is a disconnect when it comes to data security.      

“I was expecting that there would be more interest in network and data security applications after the WikiLeaks situation but that didn’t happen,” he said. “People seem to have difficulty in understanding the importance of securing their data. Perhaps that’s because there hasn’t been a major incident in this region that shocked them. We are reactionary people in this part of the world so it will probably take a situation that causes serious damage and personal impact before people wake up to the danger.”