Top Saudi telecom operator Mobily’s  high speed packet access (HSPA) broadband has covered 90 per cent of all populated areas in Saudi Arabia, representing 414 cities, regions and areas.

The announcement came days after Mobily revealed that it had concluded successful trials of its first evolved HSPA+ network speed upgrade of 42 megabits/second in response to sustained demand for mobile broadband in previously covered areas and new customers in recently covered areas.

The new speed is expected to be rolled out in major cities in the interim and will be the first major speed upgrade since Mobily became the first operator in the region to launch HSPA+ towards the end of 2009 at speeds of 21 Mbps.

Mobily closed 2009 with one million customers subscribed to its high-usage bundles, and an overall base of 18.2 million, a statement said.

According to the Communications and Information Regulatory Commission's annual report, wireless broadband in Saudi Arabia grew 488 per cent to 1.41 million wireless broadband subscriptions and representing 51 per cent of all broadband connections in the country, as compared to a 47 per cent share for ADSL.

Of those 1.41 million wireless broadband subscriptions, one million were on Mobily's network, giving the company a market share of 70 per cent market of all wireless subscriptions and 36 percent of all broadband connections in the Kingdom, the statement added. – TradeArabia News Service