DAMMAM, 13 October 2003 — After a brief lull, illegal telephone operations in the Eastern Province are in full swing again and causing potential losses for the Saudi Telephone Company and call cabin operators.
STC in cooperation with other agencies had made some progress in stemming the tide of illegal operations, and for a while it seemed as though they had been stopped altogether. But illegal operators have merely devised a new system which is more difficult to track down.
The new system allows customers to call anywhere in the world at substantially lower rates than STC’s official ones. Most of the illegal operators’ business comes from calls to the Subcontinent. The rate has come down to SR2 per minute at any time of the day.
Operators now prefer clients with their own cell phones. The operator will patch the number from his cell phone through to the customer’s via international operators in Asian countries like India and Bangladesh.
Call cabin owners say that the illegal phone operation has affected their business immensely and many cabins are up for sale.
Jaffar Al-Shammary of an international call cabin in the Suwaiket district in Alkhobar says illegal operations ruined his business. The STC crackdown improved the situation. “But just as we were starting to recover, this new operation is again causing us huge losses,” he said.
He admits the call cabin business would still be lucrative if there were no competition. It is estimated that nearly SR800 million is invested in the call cabin business.
Many call cabin operators say that the only way to curb illegal operation is to bring down the rates of international telephone calls. “They are still among the highest in the region,” Jaffar said.
Illegal telephone operations exist everywhere, he said, but nowhere were they as rampant as in Saudi Arabia, primarily because elsewhere the rates are much cheaper.
