A Mobily customer service agent told Arab News: "STC customers who want to keep their numbers can switch them over at a Mobily customer service location. The last seven digits of the STC and the Mobily number will be the same. The only difference will be instead of a 050 or 055 at the beginning of the number as with STC, there will be a 056. Mobily did this to attract STC's customers who didn't want to give up their numbers, but wanted to switch to Mobily. We knew that some people would stay with STC because they didn't want to change numbers, especially if they had nice numbers. Now we are offering them the same number but with a different prefix of 056," he said.

This news came soon after Saudi Telecom (STC) had begun providing both its Al-Jawal billing and Sawa subscribers with multimedia messaging services (MMS) in order "to be more competitive," Mobily customer care told Arab News. The service began throughout the Kingdom less than a month after competitor Mobily launched its MMS product.

Many STC subscribers who were rushing to Mobily to take advantage of the new service have now put their plans to do so on hold. "I wanted MMS service but didn't want to give up my Al-Jawal number for a Mobily one. Now I don't have to," said Mansour Selim, an Egyptian construction foreman who was visiting Saudi Telecom at Hera'a Mall in order to permanently disconnect his line.

"I was going to Mobily next to subscribe, but when the STC agent asked me why I was disconnecting my service, I told him I wanted MMS and couldn't afford two lines from two different companies. He surprised me when he said Al-Jawal also had MMS in operation and it was working. He said all I have to do was call 902," Mansour said.

Abdurahman Matouq Al-Malki, a customer service supervisor at Saudi Telecom, said: "The MMS service is free to subscribe to and is available for both our Sawa and Al-Jawal billing customers. Each message costs 55 halalas and can be up to a maximum of 100 kilobytes in size."

When Mansour learned from Arab News that he could switch to Mobily and keep his STC number, he checked with Mobily and called them. Following his call to mobily customer service, he said: "My number with STC is 050655****. With Mobily it will become 056655****. To me that is a better number. I am going to Mobily," he said.

The introduction of MMS by STC was originally going to keep Mansour with STC, but now that he can retain the 'same' number and switch to Mobily, he has every intention of doing so.

Mobily is currently offering its subscribers MMS already pre-activated on their accounts. Each MMS message costs 60 halalas per 50 kilobytes with a maximum message size of 400 kilobytes.

Al-Malki told Arab News that once customers call 902 and request the MMS service, it is turned on within an hour.

"Once it's turned on, the subscriber must then send an SMS message to 2222 and include the make and model of his or her mobile with the text 'MMS' included in the message. Within seconds the subscriber will receive a secret code from STC. When STC follows the secret code with the phone's automatic settings in a second message, the user should accept and save the settings after entering the secret code from the first message," he explained.

For those who bought their Sawa SIM cards from illegal street vendors such as those on Palestine Street here, they can also subscribe to MMS -- but only after having their accounts changed over to their name. According to Al-Malki, if a customer with a black-market Sawa chip presents the original card containing the PIN and PUK codes that come with the chip at an STC service center, the account will be changed to his name and he can then subscribe to MMS.

One service included with Mobily prepaid that STC has yet to introduce for its Sawa customers is mobile phone Internet access. This service is standard with MMS for both prepaid and billing customers. As it stands now with STC, the Internet service is only available to customers with billing accounts.

Essam Al-Ghalib

© Arab News 2005

 

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