Zain, a mobile operator in 22 countries across the Middle East and Africa, has launch commercial services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom has now joined Zain’s One Network, claimed by Zain to be the world’s first borderless mobile service, offering over 45 million Zain customers in 16 countries favourable rates, free of high roaming charges for cross-border communications.
Zain’s will cover 95% of the Kingdom’s population with its network which will initially cover 53% of the population in 36 major cities and 14 highways spanning over 4,000 kms. The remaining coverage area will be attained initially through a complimentary countrywide roaming service. Zain will also be introducing high-speed 3.5G broadband technology to approximately half of the Saudi population offering the latest 3.5G services that include television, video-calling, rich multimedia content and even faster internet access. Zain’s network will be further expanded in stages to eventually cover the entire Kingdom.
From July 26, 2008 Zain offered people the opportunity to reserve a special number, with tens of thousands registering their request. The operation has 160 official Zain outlets and over 3,000 authorised distribution points of sale, while the operation estimates that over 40,000 independent businesses will act as resellers of recharge cards. The operation currently has a 2,100 strong workforce.
Dr Saad Al Barrak, Zain CEO, commented on the role One Network would be playing on wooing new customers: “We believe that being connected to such a valuable service will be one of many factors that will attract Saudi customers to Zain…The attractiveness of and continual expansion of the One Network will play a key role in Zain attaining its year 2011 targets of attaining 150 million customers and being a top-ten global mobile operator.”
Zain in Saudi Arabia has committed investments of over US$1.5 billion in the development of the network. Recently the operation undertook a long testing phase with 9,000 mobile users that proved invaluable: “It gave our technical staff and customer care personnel the sufficient understanding and experience to improve and finesse many of the services that makeup our world-class network. We have invested heavily and we are now ready for the challenges ahead, confident of success. We are targeting equal market share along with the two existing operators in the years ahead”, commented Zain’s Saudi Arabian CEO Dr Alahmadi.
