Saudi Telecom STC least the prices of the region

It is important to note that Saudi Arabia is one of only three Arab countries that does not charge prepaid connection fees (excluding credit), the other two being Lebanon and Mauritania. The report notes that out of the four operators in Saudi Arabia, three including Saudi Telecom (Al Jawal) offer postpaid & prepaid services, one offers only postpaid. 
 

In fact, STC has the lowest rates of all mobile phone operators in the region and was the first to reduce prices as early as 1998.  Leading the field in innovation, STC was also the first regional operator to introduce prepaid without connection fees, the first to introduce credit bundles in zero and zero+ packages, and the first to implement the Low Minute rate. 
 
With four operators, Saudi Arabia is listed as one of the eleven countries with a competitive market. In Bahrain, UAE, Oman, Syria, and Tunisia the market is a duopoly, Lebanon and Libya both have a Government-owned duopoly, and in Oman the market is a monopoly.

Comparing billing methods in the 19 Arab countries, the report observes that the ‘per second only’ method has been adopted solely by operators in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan and Algeria, while operators in the other countries use the more costly ‘per minute only’ method and/or other billing methods.
It is interesting to note out of the nineteen Arab countries, the only ones in which the governments do not impose taxes on cellular services are the GCC countries, including Saudi Arabia, and Libya, whereas in eleven other Arab countries the tax on end users ranges from as low as 3% in Syria to as high as 23% in Tunisia.

According to the report, while cellular operators in general tend to prefer postpaid subscriptions since these produce guaranteed revenue streams from long-term customers, prepaid cards almost always lead to rapid growth in the subscriber base and a higher market share for the operators, although this does not necessarily result in high average revenue per user. It also points out that prepaid card packages have minimal bad credit risk. 
 
Significantly, the reports states that prepaid customers constituted 94.3% of subscribers across the Arab countries by the end of June 2008, noting that the reasons for introducing prepaid cards, regardless of the ‘lower loyalty’ factor, are affordability and convenience, especially in the case of teenagers, expatriates and visitors. Particularly, this is the case in Saudi Arabia, which has approximately 50% of the population under the age of twenty, a huge number of expatriate workers, and an influx of more than two million pilgrims a year.

21/02/2009