Zain Saudi Arabia has now joined the country's other two operators in providing phone number portability, which allows subscribers to change operators while retaining their original phone numbers. Zain, Mobily and STC signed an agreement at the Communication and Information Technology Commission's (CITC) offices in Riyadh in the presence of the commission's governor Abdullah Al-Dharrab. The commercial agreement will include Zain as a third party in offering these services. Sources said this agreement would eliminate some shortcomings with the service, adding that it includes sanctions to be imposed on operators if they do not commit to the regulatory transfer period. The agreement facilitates number portability and supports a smooth transfer of the numbers of subscribers among the three companies for the willing clients. The CITC expects some new articles to be introduced under this agreement to help curb some illegal practices. The new articles enable numbers temporarily disconnected to be transferred, and limits the reasons for rejecting an application for transferring a number to four criteria: The identification number of the applicant does not match the one in the database of the operator which the client wants to leave; failure to pay financial dues to the company; the number requested to be transferred was issued, or transferred from another company, less than two months previously; and if the number requested to be transferred was canceled. The agreement stressed that operators should abide by the CITC regulations in this regard and not reject an application without a lawful reason. The agreement was created following a series of meetings and discussions between the CITC experts and officials supervising the introduction of the service. They benefited from the Kingdom's experience over the last five years and applied the best developments and improvements in the field. The CITC will supervise the agreement to guarantee the rights of both subscribers and operators. Saudi Arabia was one of the first countries in the world to implement the service, in 2006. __
