Monday, January 11, 2010

Saudi Arabia - Mobily first to launch HSPA+ in region

[zawya] Saudi mobile operator Etihad Etisalat (Mobily), Saudi Arabia's fastest-growing telecommunications operator, is the first to use Evolved High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA+) in the region on its 3.75G network, available in 337 areas in the Kingdom, the company announced on Saturday.

HSPA+ facilitates internet access at speeds of up to 21.6 megabits per second.

Mobily, the Kingdom's leader in mobile broadband, is keen to bring the latest in telecommunications and broadband technologies in the world to the fingertips of its consumers. Mobily would sell a modem that supports HSPA+ soon.

Last year, Mobily spread HSPA+ in Jeddah, Makkah, Madina, Dammam and Dhahran. It will spread the technology in Riyadh over the next two weeks.

Mobily made mobile broadband available to its subscribers in 80 percent of the Kingdom's populated areas. They can connect to the internet using a simple-to-use, compact USB modem or directly through their mobile phones.

Mobily had passed the one million mobile broadband subscribers landmark. Those subscribers belong to both high-usage mobile bundles and broadband internet bundles.

Mobily had launched its bundles on May 19, 2007. By that year's end, Mobily had 73,000 mobile broadband subscribers. In 2008, Mobily announced it had 266,000 broadband subscribers, representing a growth of 264 percent.

The GSM Association, the world's GSM promoter, declared that Mobily's network is the busiest in the world with data traffic.

Since December 2007, data traffic grew tenfold, reaching 50 terabytes in December 2009.

Mobily first to launch HSPA+ in region

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