Mobile broadband to replace every fixed method to get online, says Mobily CEO

Engineer Khalid Bin Omar Al Kaf's remarks came during the Telecoms Leaders Summit that was held on the sidelines of the Mecom telecommunications expo in Abu Dhabi, where he was the keynote speaker.

Al Kaf walked his audiences through his company's experience in providing mobile broadband in Saudi Arabia and the challenges a unique market such as that of the Kingdom's poses to a dynamic, fact-growing company like Mobily.

Al Kaf's predictions are especially important given that Saudi Arabia is the country in which broadband penetration is the weakest in the region. The Mobily boss's vision is that each and every household in the Kingdom will soon have a number of broadband-enabled mobile phones whose owners will use to get online, instead of using a single, fixed connection.

Al Kaf added:

"This vision of ours might not be eye-to-eye with other operators in the region, but we do believe that mobile broadband will be the most popular method to get online in the future, surpassing narrow-band connections like dial-ups, and even ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines)."

Despite having been in business for four short years, Mobily currently dominates the mobile broadband sector in the Kingdom with an 85% market share, with a full roaster of 3G services up to and including 3.75G.

Mobily aggressively got most of the vast Kingdom's populated areas covered with 3G and beyond, and is working hard to get the service spread over the entire territory. Mobily had announced earlier that it had set aside as much as SR2bn for the project.

During this year's Gitex expo in Riyadh, Mobily also made the surprise announcement that it will be the first operator in Saudi Arabia to introduce 4G by early next year. The company actually had visitors try out the service at a dedicated corner in its huge booth.

Respected international sources had identified Mobily as the Middle East's fastest-growing operator - a label made even more credible by the handsome SR2.1bn in net profits the company made in 2008. Despite the crushing global financial crisis, Mobily still managed to increase its Q1 2009 profits by 47% from Q1 2008, to a healthy SR480m.

Also, Mobily has been gobbling up some prestigious international awards lately. Mobily was the first Arabian company ever to win the prestigious Dale Carnegie leadership award. Also, the company's retail outlets were designated as the standard by which retail outlet design should be judged.