STC reinforcing its systems to serve pilgrims

Saudi Telecom Company (STC) has completed the greater part of the expansion works, implementation of special solutions, protection systems and inter-network and international expansions of the network to continue the successes it has traditionally achieved in Ramadan in spite of the increased numbers of users by the thousands from year to year during specific periods of the year.
The internal and external solution plan by STC aims to continue implementation and addition of more than 3,224 fixed and mobile base stations to support advanced HSPA+ 3G and LTE 4G in Makkah and Madinah by increasing the capacity by over 40 percent compared to last year in some areas that are frequently visited by Umrah performers and visitors in Ramadan.
All solutions have been designed in more than one frequency and on three carriers to add more fluidity during the peak hours expected before, during and after prayer times at the two Harams — in Makkah and Madinah.
This will ensure delivering fixed data transmission speeds of up to 42 megabit/s and capacity of more than 27,000 customers simultaneously.
Furthermore, new sites have been provided at all ihram times outside Makkah.
Preparations also included other service networks e.g. FTTH, DSL and VDSL provided by STC to residential sectors, lodgings, hotels, government and service entities, buildings and towers surrounding the Haram and the shrines and WiFi Hot Spots in order to meet the increasing demand on service and higher speeds of more than 1000 megabit/s.
STC has introduced new elements onto its transmission networks such as more than 130,000 km long modern fiber optics and IPMPLS networks making it the biggest infrastructure in the region.
It transmits national and international voice and data services and value added services solely delivered by STC inside and outside Makkah in an integrated mode via international gateways that transmit voice calls with a capacity of more than 25 million calls per hour plus an Internet and carrier, which was expanded to more than 500 gigabyte transmitting daily over 3,000 terabyte and linked to major world service providers.