RIYADH: Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) awarded three global infrastructure leaders contracts worth SR799 million for the Kingdom-wide capacity expansion of its mobile broadband networks. The award of the contracts to Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks come a year after a similar expansion worth SR600 million, and announced by Mobily a month ahead of the company's achieving one million mobile broadband subscribers. The three companies will work to increase the footprint of Mobily's mobile broadband network, already covering 92 percent of all populated areas in the Kingdom, and considered the largest of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa region. Under the accord, Mobily will be upgrading sections of network to offer a full high speed packet access (HSPA) experience to its customers from 3.5G technology to 3.75G technology. The goal of this expansion, said Khalid Al Kaf, Mobily's managing director and chief executive officer, is to strengthen the robust performance and operational efficiency of Mobily's network, stressing that the company will continue to invest in this segment of its operations and continue to grow and differentiate itself as set forth in its GED (growth, efficiency, differentiation) objectives. “The new expansion will offer more and more customers access to speeds of 21.6 megabits per second,” he added. The company's launch of these speeds on its network and HSPA+ was matched with the launch of devices supporting these speeds. “In general this capacity expansion comes as part of our efforts geared towards adding value to the lives of our customers,” Al Kaf said. Mobily's network is not only the largest in the region, but also enjoys the highest volume of data exchange, allowing the company to hold lead in the provision of mobile data communication through a strong technical and marketing strategy. At the end of 2009, Mobily announced it had one million active mobile broadband subscribers, using its advanced mobile data communication services, through USB dongle modems (branded connect), mobile handsets supporting HSPA/HSPA+, or their iPhones, in addition to watching TV streamed on their mobiles and making video calls.
