JEDDAH, 9 July — Saudi Telecom Company has taken measures to block the reception of pornographic photographs in Saudi Arabian mobile phones abusing the text messaging service, said a high-ranking official of the company.
The STC’s move also included steps to block the misuse of text messaging service to pass obscene songs and messages.
Saleh Al-Jasser, STC’s marketing manager for the mobile phone division, said since the Saudi telephone’s text messaging service has been programmed exclusively to send and receive word texts, it cannot be used for sending pictures.
Jasser added that the subscribers’ identity cannot be concealed when messaging. The receiving set displays the source of the message except when sent through the Internet which is not very common, the official added.
More than 2 million messages are being sent daily on mobiles phones in the Kingdom with a tendency to increase on special occasions, he said. At a daily average of 2.27 million messaging more than 68 million messages were sent last month because of the publishing of the school examination results, he said.
Each message is charged at the rate of 30 halala with an additional 10 halalas to acknowledge the reception.
The messaging system is capable of sending pictures but STC blocked the service shortly after its implementation to avoid any possible abuse, he said.
An STC report confirmed the increasing popularity of the text messaging. It has steadily increased in the past months from 40 million in April. People use it even to exchange jokes and other messages as is done in other parts of the world. Though the cell phone manufacturers claim that their products have the feature to receive and sending photographs STC’s decision to stop the feature stopped the marketing of such sets.
The company launched text messaging last year on an experimental basis and was adopted as a regular service since the beginning of January.
