Engineer Abdulaziz Saleh Alsaghyir, Chairman of the Board stated that Mobily is developing and enhancing its infrastructure through its networks expansion, which will help the company keep growing as per its declared business strategy. He indicated that smartphone penetration in the Kingdom is estimated at 11% - according to some studies - and is still growing as more affordable mid-range and low end smart phones will be marketed to reach a wider audience and prices are going to drop on high-end models. He also highlighted the substantial increase in utility and usage of connected smart devices and the range of social networking websites applications, like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, which is a major driver of demand for Internet connectivity in a youth-dominated society, especially some social media platforms releasing Arabic versions.
Eng. Alsaghyir maintained that the number of broadband users had exceeded 5 million, that Mobily has an estimated 75% share of mobile broadband subscriptions in the Kingdom, that daily Mobily 3G network traffic exceeded 100 terabyte and that WiMAX network carry the same volume of daily data traffic. In order to keep up with all these variables, Mobily adopted its strategic decision to add LTE services which will be a major factor for excellence and differentiation with the potential for broadband market share gains; because of LTE ability to provide higher capacity, higher data transfer speeds, higher peak rates, higher spectral efficiency, more scalability and lower latency, which will improve the customer experience and enable home users in the Kingdom, including communities beyond the reach of a fixed-line infrastructure, to have access to fast broadband speeds that exceed speeds of a fixed line connection.
He added that Mobily LTE network operation is expected to start before the end of 2011, pointing out that the major cities of the Kingdom will be covered first and the remaining cities will be covered as per a well studied plan depending on many technical and marketing factors.
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