TAIF, 21 February 2007 — Telephone cabins across the Kingdom are losing business as expatriates flock to clandestine telephone booths that provide users with extremely cheap international telephone calls.
Using the Internet to make calls, these illegal telephone booths are usually located in dingy areas with high concentration of foreigners. The owners advertise the services they offer and their location through word of mouth.
The Saudi Telecom Company says that for quite some time it has felt a negative impact on the trade carried out by official telephone booths.
“There are hardly any customers and investors are closing shop and switching trade. We investigated the cause and it transpired that expatriates are using illegal telephone booths to phone relatives abroad at prices next to nothing,” said STC spokesman Hamam ibn Sadeq.
“We set up a plan to find these people by checking telephone invoices. If there is a high level of Internet usage — over 20 hours a day — then together with the police we visit the address and see what’s happening there,” said Sadeq.
The STC spokesman said illegal telephone booths are usually housed in small rooms with two or three computers and a host of telephone and mobile phone sets. “There are special devices and software specially used for this. They’re brought from abroad as they are unavailable locally. Some of these foreigners smuggle them into the Kingdom in rice bags,” he said.
Sadeq believes that illegal booths can earn anything between SR10,000 and SR20,000 a month. “The monthly salary of an operator might be SR600 or SR800 and so this is not a small fortune,” he said.
“Each week we catch around five to seven illegal telephone booths. When we visit the address we find a lot of people lining up in queues waiting for their turn to call abroad for half or even a quarter of a riyal a minute. The people behind these booths are making a lot of money,” added Sadeq.
He believes that illegal telephone booths also negatively affect the economy. “They are very harmful to the Saudi economy and telephone companies as well. Members of the public need to stop using these illegal booths because it affects them as well,” he said, adding that he believes low salaries force these people to use clandestine telephone booths.
“The best way to stop this is to punish them severely. When we catch these people we initially make them sign a letter promising not to repeat the crime. We then release them and tell them that if they are caught they will be fined, jailed and then deported and that their names will be added to a blacklist,” said Sadeq.
