MUZDALIFA, Makkah, 24 December 2006 — Minister of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT) Muhammad Jameel Mulla expressed his satisfaction at the elaborate telecommunication and postal facilities in place at Makkah and the holy sites following a three-hour field inspection yesterday. “I am happy that the telecommunication arrangements for this year’s Haj are elaborate enough to meet the increasing requirements of the guests of Allah,” Mulla said in a press meeting following the inspection tour at Muzdalifa, a major location in the Holy sites where all the pilgrims will have to spend a few nights.
The MCIT minister said the Saudi Telecom Company and the Etihad Ettisalat (Mobily) have nearly doubled their separate capacity to contain the requirements of the pilgrims with the necessary measures to avoid network jams while making phone calls. The minister said that over the several past years serious networking pilgrims experienced glitches and he hoped that the recent expansion works would offer effective solutions to facilitate rapid connectivity.
The minister told Arab News that the telephone tariffs in the Kingdom were almost at the same level as in the neighboring countries. “One should not make an assessment based on a partial comparison of the tariffs in the Kingdom with other countries but it should be made with an overall view that will undoubtedly show that our tariff is not different from many other countries including the Gulf,” he said, pointing out that over the past three years telephone subscribers in the Kingdom witnessed sharp cuts in the call charges.
The minister further hoped that the tariff would come down with the entry of a third mobile company and a second landlines company in the coming few months or years. The minister also watched the display of the technical preparations that have been made for this season by both the STC and Mobily.
Khaled Al-Kaf, executive president and member of the board of directors of the Etihad Ettisalat, who was present while the minister made his inspection visit to the Mobily’s facilities, told Arab News that the Mobily’s network installations built at the holy sites have the additional feature of mobility that enables them to move from place to place as the locations of pilgrim convergence shift from Arafat to Muzdalifa and then on to Mina and Makkah.
“Mobily, which learned a lot during the last Haj season, has been striving to present a far superior service this season based on the experience we acquired last year when our database and potentials were limited. We have doubled our connectivity capacity to cross the 1.5 million mark at the holy sites alone while it was 750,000 last year. In Makkah we have expanded our lines to two million from last year’s one million and Madinah from 300,000 to 600,000,” Al-Kaf said.
The official assured that the network jam would be the minimum this year particularly on the peak days of Dhul Hijja 9, 10 and 11. The executive director noted that its big investment in Makkah, holy sites and Madinah, which improved the quality of service, earned a good reputation for the Mobily on an international level as millions of foreign pilgrims go back to their respective countries appreciating the company’s services.
He said the Mobily services were not confined to the holy sites and holy cities but to the roads along which the pilgrims pass through. A pilgrim from any neighboring country will feel the efficiency of the Mobily service the moment he crosses the land border, he said.
He also disclosed that the Mobily planned to bid for the second landlines company to be licensed soon in the Kingdom. He pointed out that the third mobile phone company will increase the competition and will lead to the inevitable decline in the cost of subscriber calls.
