MAP > Internet Providers in Saudi Arabia

Supporting the digital technologies is the key component of Saudi Arabia future strategy. The Saud Arabia got to enter 2018 on a very positive note with a government announcement of the largest financial budget ever that is going to support country’s expansion as well as the diversification plans as part of the Vision 2030 program. The strategy that is going to implement the changes that relate to enhancing Kingdom’s economy through the increases in the taxes as well as the fuel prices and encouraging investment as well as the diversification away from the reliance on the oil. It is going to support the use of digital technologies for such use as cloud computing as well as e-commerce and enhancing ICT development, and this is including the investments in the broadband infrastructure.

The Broadband is available in Saudi Arabia the DSL, wireless and fiber. In the year 2018, the DSL subscriptions still count for the largest proportion of the fixed broadband subscriptions but have now been on the decline as the consumers switch to the mobile broadband or even the FttH or the FttP services.

The internet penetration in Saudi Arabia has gone on and reached around 80%, which is well above average for the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has been committed to offering Internet services to the deprived rural areas and the special Universal project that was established around ten years ago. This program has now been over three quarters completed with the thousands of localities offering the access where it was not previously considered commercially viable for the operators to do so. Mobile operators have gone on and faced the recent changes as well as challenges with the introduction of biometric fingerprint law that saw the subscriber’s number getting to drop and also shift away from the prepaid accounts.
The major competitive shakeup for Saudi telecom sector started in late 2016 when the Saudi government announced that there were plans to go on and award the unified licenses to the Zain Saudi Arabia as well as Mobily, that would easily allow the operators to provide the fixed line telephony as well as the internet services. In the past, only the STC got to be permitted to do so. In the year 2018, Go Telecom’s for unified license got to be rejected, however.

To further increase the competition in the mobile market, got to be the recent lifting of the OTT VoIP as well as the messaging service bans, hence allowing the providers such as WhatsApp, Skype and many more to start the operations again.