Mobily successfully completed trials for the coming upgrade of its state-of-the- art evolved high-speed packet access (HSPA+) network testing speeds of 42 megabits per second (Mbps), according to a statement issued by the company Friday. The 42 Mbps speed, expected to be rolled out in major cities in the interim, will be the first major speed upgrade since Mobily became the first operator in the region to launch HSPA+ towards the end of 2009 at speeds of 21 Mbps, and closed the year with one million customers subscribed to its high-usage bundles, and an overall base of 18.2 million. “The coming speed upgrade is an extension of our overall strategy of continuing on the path of innovation to bring value to the lives of our customers,” said Khalid Al Kaf, Mobily's managing director and chief executive officer. Mobily already covers 400 cities, regions and provinces in the Kingdom covering 80 percent of all populated areas with its HSPA network - almost giving anyone who needs Internet mobile broadband always-on connectivity. Mobily's HSPA network has given a much needed boost to household Internet usage in the Kingdom with household penetration rates more than doubling from around 14 percent for end of 2008 results to 32 percent for yearend 2009, according to the Communications and Information Regulatory Commission's annual report. According to the same report, wireless broadband grew 488 percent to 1.41 million wireless broadband subscriptions and representing 51 percent of all broadband connections in the country, as compared to a 47 percent share for ADSL. Of those 1.41 million wireless broadband subscriptions, one million were on Mobily's network, giving the company a market share of 70 percent market of all wireless subscriptions and 36 percent of all broadband connections in the Kingdom. Feeding that growth since it kick-started on May 19, 2007 with the launch of the region's first unlimited data bundle, and at the time one of very few in the world, is Mobily's almost back to back launch of new connection devices and timely network upgrades, all the way from the first PCMCIA based modem to the current turbo generation of devices launched in March of this year. Mobile data traffic on Mobily's network has grown exponentially over the past three years prompting the GSM World Association to describe Mobily's network as the busiest on the face of the planet. In December of 2009 alone, Mobily's HSPA network exchanged 1.23 petabytes of traffic up 283 percent across a period of 12-months from 0.51 petabytes in December of 2008.
