JEDDAH, 26 April 2005 — Saudi mobile phone operator Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) said yesterday it will begin operating soon and aims to have 1 million subscribers by the end of 2005. Etisalat bid around SR12 billion last year for Saudi Arabia’s second mobile phone license, allowing to compete with majority state owned Saudi Telecommunications Company.
“We will begin operating very soon. We hope that to have 1 million subscribers by the end of the year,” said Hassan Al-Sawwa, Etihad Etisalat corporate sales manager, told Reuters at an information technology exhibition in Riyadh. Al-Sawwa said the firm’s network had undergone extensive testing and will cover 100 percent of the Kingdom. “We gave (mobile phone) SIM cards to 600 employees over two weeks to make sure all our services operated smoothly,” said Al-Sawwa. The state telecommunication regulator said last month a third mobile telephone license was likely to be issued during the third quarter.
In the mean time, Cisco Systems announced yesterday that Mobily is implementing Cisco’s Internet Contact Center (IPCC) and IP Communications solutions at its state of the art customer service centers and throughout its corporate network to deliver advanced telephony and communications services to its customers and employees. Mobily’s contact center is the focal point of all customer service functions for the business and Cisco IP Contact Center is being deployed to 150 agents to provide advanced call center applications including computer telephony integration (CTI), intelligent call routing and Internet Service Node (Network IVR) for distributed IVR services as well as self service capabilities. The IPCC solution also offers unified messaging capabilities, allowing agents to handle customer communications by phone, fax, voice mail, e-mail and capability to support customers via its online support site. “Through Cisco’s proven technology for IP-based communications, we aim to establish one of the most advanced corporate communications and administrations networks in the telecoms industry in the region,” said Khalid Al-Kaf, CEO of Mobily.
As part of the network convergence project, Mobily is also implementing Cisco network security and IP telephony solutions throughout the corporate network with 600 Cisco IP phones and Cisco firewalls with intrusion detection and protection.
