RIYADH – Saudi Telecom Co (STC)'s interactive TV (Invision) subscribers increased by more than 190 percent by the end of 2012. The increase comes within the context of STC's dedication to enhance the FTTH infrastructure by employing capable human and financial resources to keep pace with the strategic expansion for fiber networks in major Saudi cities, and by linking the various sectors and facilities, including residential and commercial, with the latest communication technologies, especially as the number of subscribers to over 100,000 customers increase FTTH. STC continues toward deploying the biggest fiber network on the GCC scale, as it concluded linking more than half a million homes with FTTH technology, within the context of its plan that aims to link more than 1.5 million sites by the end of 2014, taking into account the company's success at linking various Saudi cities and villages with each other via the FTTH network with a reach exceeding 300,000 km, that embodies the biggest investment of its kind in the Kingdom which will benefit the enterprise sector and the overall mobile network. In this regard, STC's VP for Home Services, Eng. Mazyad Al Harbi, was optimistic about the developments and reiterated that this success shall motivate STC to move forward. “This success motivates us to exert more effort to develop our services and products in a way that suits customer needs, in addition to our continuous development of multimedia services by spotting opportunities that would enhance investments in this domain, and to further work on disseminating and developing our services in fiber optic services by expanding our advanced network coverage to reach all populated areas in the various regions of the Kingdom,” he said. STC searches diligently for all active tools that may exceed customer expectations, by keeping pace with modern advancement in technology, via offering exclusive services such as the interactive TV “Invision” service, which contributed to revolutionizing the concept of TV and enriching the Saudi household in addition to exclusively offering the best TV channel packages that contain more than 150 channels with many features like pause, rewind, record, and the retrieval features which enable the customer to replay any program even 7 days after it is aired on TV, in addition to the Video on Demand (VOD) service offering a diverse library of religious programs, documentaries, movies and series. STC launched the “OTT” service via “Invision”, which enables customers to watch series and movie content on PC and smart phone devices like iPhone and iPad. — SG
