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Among the most
significant achievements the Kingdom has attained come the Large development
in domestic and international telecommunication services due to the fact that
Saudi Arabia has one of the modern and latest wire and wireless networks in
the world. The number of the operating lines of the telephone sets and
special service reaches more than 3.2 million lines as fixed telephone lines
and 3,501 telex lines in addition to 35,500 lines of special circuits lines
(rented circuits) in the years 1422H. The government has introduced mobile
telephone service. The number of subscribers in this service comes to more
than two millions in the year 1420H. The government as well, has provided the
Pager service whose subscriber's amounts to about 534,000.
King Fahd city for
space telecommunications has been inaugurated which is considered as one of
the biggest space telecommunication cities in the world. This city Consists
of four (4) ground stations two of which operating with the Atlantic and
Indian oceans satellites, a standard station working with Arab Satellite
(Arab sat) and another standard station for sea telecommunication connected
with satellites in Indian Ocean.
In 1418H, the Saudi
Telecommunication Company (STC) has been founded. Riyadh City by the virtue
of the active role played by Saudi Arabia in space telecommunications became
the head quarters of (Arabsat). The postal service in the Kingdom covers more
than 6,000 cities, provinces, villages and hijras with a postal network of
646 main and branch offices and about 5,000 mobile points and many express
mail centers or aching postal works, postal agenesis and subscribing offices
all has been extended to them.
In Riyadh city,
there are more than 600,000 telephone lines and about 180,000 mobile lines in
1420H–1999AD. The expansion of telephone networks has been accompanied by
using digital lines and optical fibers. It has been also been accompanied by
a big reduction of International and mobile calls rates during 1420H-1421H, just
to become between 50 and 95 halalas at peak hours in Zu Al Hija, 1421H (March
2001AD) tariff.
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