Mobily () is a Saudi Arabian telecommunications services company that offers

fixed line A landline is a physical telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber from the subscriber's premises to the network, allowing multiple phones to operate simultaneously on the same phone number. It is also referred to as plain old ...

mobile telephony Mobile telephony is the provision of wireless telephone services to mobile phones, distinguishing it from fixed-location telephony provided via landline phones. Traditionally, telephony specifically refers to voice communication, though th ...

, and

Internet services An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non ...

. The company was established in 2004, and, in the summer of that year, won the bid for Saudi Arabia's second GSM licence. Mobily launched mobile services in Saudi Arabia on 5 May 2005, breaking Saudi Telecom's

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek and ) is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic Competition (economics), competition to produce ...

in the wireless business.

History

Etihad Etisalat Co. was incorporated as a

joint stock company A joint-stock company (JSC) is a business entity in which shares of the company's capital stock, stock can be bought and sold by shareholders. Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion, evidenced by their share (finance), shares (certifi ...

under

royal decree A decree is a legal proclamation, usually issued by a head of state, judge, royal figure, or other relevant authorities, according to certain procedures. These procedures are usually defined by the constitution, Legislative laws, or customary l ...

no. M/40 dated 18 August 2004. The company won the bid for Saudi Arabia's second GSM licence in the summer of 2004. The licence is valid for 25 years. Etihad Etisalat began its constituent activities on 14 December 2004 upon the publication of its incorporation.

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab E ...

firm

Etisalat e&, formerly branded as Etisalat, is an Emirati state-owned telecommunications company. It is the 16th largest in the world by subscribers. On 31 December 2021, Etisalat reported consolidated revenue of AED 53.3 billion and net profits of AED ...

holds a 27.45% stake in the company, the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI) holds 11.85% and the rest is held by other investors and by public shares. Etisalat Etihad held an

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in October 2004 that was massively oversubscribed (30 times). Police had to be called in to respond to unrest among investors fighting over application forms.Ettihad Etisalat IPO descends into chaos
telegeography.com, 25 Oct 2004 In December 2004,

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a family of standards to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks, as used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and Mobile broadband modem, mobile broadba ...

described Mobily as the fastest growing mobile operator in the Middle East & North Africa. In 2006, Mobily reached more than 4,800,000 subscribers. As of 20 January 2007, Mobily had 6 million subscribers and 0.5 million 3G users. Etihad Etisalat launched GSM mobile services under the brand name Mobily on 5 May 2005, breaking the

Saudi Telecom Company The Saudi Telecom Company (shortened to stc; ), trading as STC Group provides ICT services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, across the Middle East and Europe. The group offers landline and fixed infrastructure, mobile and data services, and br ...

's monopoly in the wireless business. The company had spent 6 months preparing for the launch, and acquired 1 million subscribers within the first 90 days of launch. The company launched

3.5G High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunica ...

services on 27 June 2006 and 4G services on 13 September 2011. After 10 years of managing Mobily's services, in February 2021,

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

extended its partnership with Mobily and signed a 3-year agreement that allows it to manage and maintain the radio and transport networks in Riyadh and other regions. In May 2013, it was reported that Mobily is working on a way to intercept encrypted data sent over the Internet by

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

Viber Rakuten Viber, commonly known as Viber, is a cross-platform voice over IP (VoIP) and instant messaging (IM) software application owned by Japanese multinational company Rakuten, provided as freeware for the Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows, mac ...

WhatsApp WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make vo ...

, and other mobile apps, and to bypass the protections built into the SSL and

Transport Layer Security Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network, such as the Internet. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over ...

protocols.Moxie Marlinspike
A Saudi Arabia Telecom's Surveillance Pitch
May 13, 2013

Network technology

Radio frequency summary

References

External links

* {{Etisalat 2004 establishments in Saudi Arabia Telecommunications companies established in 2004 Companies of Saudi Arabia Companies listed on Tadawul Companies based in Riyadh Mobile phone companies of Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabian brands Etisalat

History

Network technology

Radio frequency summary

See also

References

External links