RIYADH, 5 July 2007 — Bravo — the first telecommunication company in the Kingdom to offer walkie-talkie services — has announced that it has completed its coverage of southern regions of Abha, Jizan, Najran as well as the Northern Border as part of its plan to establish full coverage in the Kingdom.
“With the expansion of our coverage in the Kingdom, we have successfully covered the entire Kingdom from east to west, which include highways, cities, and towns,” said Ziad Shatara, CEO of Bravo. “Our aim is to establish full coverage of the entire Kingdom without any exceptions.”
Speaking at a press conference here on Sunday, Shatara said that in addition to local coverage, Bravo aimed at establishing international coverage with countries that use similar wireless technology. He specifically named Jordan as one of the countries the company aims at providing international coverage in.
Representatives from the Saudi Arabian Airlines catering department as well as National Handling Company as two of the company’s main clients attended the function.
“We now serve 10,000 Saudi companies in the Kingdom,” he said, adding that the company’s services are aimed at businessmen, companies, public and private institutions, as well as locals and residents.
He said the PTT service was specifically aimed for heads of departments and employees on the job that demand an immediate response to calls made during working hours. Unlike cell phones, subscribers call one another using a wireless technology that is similar to walkie-talkies. They use certain frequencies. Customers do not need to pay for minutes or seconds during their conversations as is the case with cell phone companies. The fee is by subscription, not by amount of talk time.
“With Bravo, talking is non-stop. There is no credit limits or pay per minute,” he said. “Other companies work by pay-per-minute while we provide unlimited talking per a one time subscription.”
The subscription packages are provided at reasonable costs that are within the reach of locals and residents. Customers need not pay for service charges, he said.
A new feature for Bravo is that it enables a customer to talk to more than one person at a time. Bravo also enables users to make and receive mobile and international calls through its network and other networks in the Kingdom. Clients can make and receive calls to and from landlines with total clarity.
Other new features by the company include SMS and multimedia services. Clients can exchange text messages with other clients from virtually all wireless carriers in the Kingdom and around the world.
Using the GPS, Bravo also now provides Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and Asset Tracking Solutions. The company announced that it was now using Al Masar service — a web-based mobile resource management application — for companies to track the locations of their clients using Bravo on the Web.
