RIYADH, 22 December 2007 — Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) has increased concurrent call capacity by 110 percent in the holy city of Madinah to 1.2 million calls, the company said in a statement yesterday.
Mobily said it had tripled the number of master switching centers in the Prophet’s City. Each master switching center has a capacity of around half a million concurrent calls.
Mobily said it had expanded its coverage of the holy city, the area surrounding the Prophet’s Holy Mosque, and the Madinah-Makkah highway, all of which went into service almost two years ago.
The increase in concurrent call capacity comes as a response to an increase in demand on Mobily’s network in the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah during this Haj pilgrimage season, as compared to the last Haj season.
Users on Mobily’s network in the holy site of Mina, the area surrounding the Grand Mosque in Makkah passed the 1.5 million mark over the past few days, since the first day of Eid. Mobily expects to have at least 500,000 local and roaming users making calls on its network in Madinah in the coming few days.
Users and customers wishing to benefit from Mobily’s advanced services can benefit from them from a wide variety of points of sale, at airports, hotels, sales outlets. Mobily has a special package for visitors traveling into the Kingdom dubbed “Rihal.”
Customers in the holy site of Mina can visit Mobily branch from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. while other branches operated in cooperation with partners work 24 hours a day.
Last Wednesday, Mobily said it had set up 70 WiFi access points in the holy sites for use free of charge by journalists and the general public in cooperation with Bayanat Al-Oula.
Mobily has consistently provided the best network coverage in the holy sites since its launch in May 2005.
This year, Mobily added 82 new sites, increasing its coverage by 58 percent.
