Infrastructure developments at Mobily

Ahmed Farroukh, CEO of Mobily talks about infrastructure developments at Mobily.

How about the other areas like FTTH, Broadband, and 4G?

One of the things that we did in almost two years in Saudi Arabia is that we were the first to do the Fibre to the home. This is revolutionary because the infrastructure was not there. Mobily is reaching every home through the Fibre to provide the best experience. When Fibre reaches home it becomes multimedia in terms of the content and the internet connectivity you can provide and the voice that you can give in future.

Can you talk about the infrastructure improvements and the technologies? I understand that the FTTH is now available in 0.8 million homes. So what are the investments in this field?

The FTTH is facing some difficulties in expanding due to regulatory issues, as it is the case in Riyadh where we cannot dig anymore. However, the main issue revolves around the speed. You don’t want for a video on YouTube that is a few seconds long to take several minutes to download. So, what we are trying to do now is to move into LTE technology where we can really deliver the speed that is needed for our customers so that experience can be enhanced. Investment now is going towards enhancing a digital future at a very reasonable price and quality. Quality has to be superior at the best pricing.

So, your future plans is to focus more on 4G technology?

Our focus in investment will definitely be on 4G. It will take almost two years of testing for 5G to see the light. For us, LTE will be our main investment.