RIYADH, 28 December 2006 — Mobily, the second mobile operator in Saudi Arabia, has completed its preparations for covering all the holy sites in Makkah and Madinah with its network, as part of its Haj project.
According to Humoud Al-Ghobaini, the Mobily spokesman, the company had doubled its capacity at all the holy sites of Arafat, Muzdalifah, Mina and in the vicinity of the two holy mosques.
“We have added more base stations and we put new modern exchanges in service this year. We now have four exchanges in Makkah alone which will serve three million subscribers at the same time,” Al-Ghobaini said. “Mobily participated in Haj last year for the first time and was very successful” in terms of providing GSM coverage for all pilgrims, whether the subscribers or the international roamers who were using our network,” he added.
Mobily acquired more than five million subscribers since it started service in mid-2005. It has been able to extend its network coverage to include all major cities in the Kingdom including highways.
