RIYADH, 8 May 2005 — The Integrated Telecom Company (ITC) announced at a press conference here yesterday that it will start operations in the Kingdom in about three months’ time after signing historic documents that provides landing stations for FLAG Telecom’s FALCON cable system in Jeddah and Dammam and the purchase of capacity on the new regional terabits cable system.
The signing yesterday of a multimillion dollar investment in Saudi Arabia followed similar agreements with Bahrain, Egypt, India, Oman and Qatar, according to Dr. Mohammed Omar, president and CEO.
Omar said that once in service, FALCON will enable ITC to provide high-quality, direct international connectivity from the Kingdom’s east and west coasts to the global business centers around the world, supporting the introduction of advanced broadband services throughout the country.
“The significant investment in landing stations on the east and west coasts and the purchase of capacity on FALCON are key elements in our plans to provide our customers within the Kingdom with reliable, direct international connectivity on one global network,” Omar said.
He said the “network diversity provided via the two landing stations, together with the added protection of the FALCON loop system within the Gulf, will greatly assist providing subscribers with world-class infrastructure to meet the growing demands for fast Internet services.”
Walid Irshaid, FLAG Telecom president for Middle East and Africa, said that “ITC’s position in the Kingdom’s telecommunications market makes it an ideal partner to FLAG as part of the FALCON project”.
FALCON, a new high capacity resilient loop cable system, is being installed to provide multiple landings throughout the Gulf region, with submarine links stretching from the Middle East to Egypt in the west and, initially, to India in the east.
Across India the FALCON system can interconnect seamlessly with India’s domestic networks, including Reliance’s 80,000-km. high speed domestic infrastructure, allowing customers to access major cities and towns.
In addition to the network diversity provided by the two landing stations, FALCON’s loop protection within the Gulf region will provide added circuit resilience into and out of the Kingdom. It will also provide high-quality connectivity to the countries connected to the cable.
In March this year, it was awarded one of the two data licenses in the Kingdom after which the company won the right to build wired and wireless networks for data services in the Kingdom, including international gateways and exchanges, and to operate, maintain and use these for the provision of data services in the Kingdom.
