The United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has classified the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as one of the first countries in the world to open ultra-fast Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband networks, praising its efforts in opening broadband and disseminating its services. This came in a report published by the ITU on its website after an agreement supervised by the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) between all telecommunications and information technology companies that own the infrastructure and provide Fiber-optic services in the Kingdom. The report revealed that the Kingdom is one of the first countries in the world to conclude an agreement in which both the incumbent's and all alternative operators' active FTTH networks (operated by STC and Dawiyat, ITC and Mobily, respectively) are shared, allowing all broadband Service Providers (Go, ITC, Mobily, STC and Zain) to offer retail services to all customers covered by any of the FTTH networks. The ITU report commended the work model adopted to lead the technical, legal and commercial discussions necessary for the success of more than 10 bilateral agreements that include infrastructure owners and service providers. It stressed the importance of the regulations issued by CITC in this field to ensure the implementation of the agreement, including rules and guidelines for providing wholesale services using Fiber-optic network, which was approved by the Commission in the Kingdom last November.
