Saudi Telecom Company (STC) has reaffirmed its leading role in the telecom industry by launching the 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) services in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain, said its top official.

This makes the STC group the first firm in the Mena region to initiate deploying this new generation in three countries, remarked CEO Saud bin Majed Al-Daweesh.

'GSMA, the global organization for mobile systems consisting of 1,000 companies spread across 219 countries worldwide, declared that STC was officially the first operator in the region to launch the 4G service across the Mena region on September 12 last year as other operators followed their footsteps after that date.'

According to him, STC Group has completed with great success the launch of the 4G LTE services throughout the region for the first time in Saudi, Kuwait and Bahrain.

Al-Daweesh said STC was now focusing on developing the techniques of its networks in all the 10 countries of its operation.

'To achieve these goals, we are employing the very best highly qualified professionals to provide clients with world-class sophisticated technologies and service,' said the STC chief.

Achieving these goals requires keeping the pace with new and innovative trends to offer customers the rapid speeds needed for data and information transfer services before anyone else in the market, he added.

STC Group, said Daweesh, adopted 4G early in 2010 and announced the success of testing, heralding a new era in the telecommunications industry.

'The new technology is based on expanding capacity and efficiency of the network, consequently impacting the rapidity of virtual transfer up to a speed of 100Mbps. Also, LTE allows operators to provide fixed services on the mobile network and to smoothly merge between both fixed and mobile services,' he added.

STC began launching the service in 11 cities across Saudi Arabia through more than 600 venues in the last quarter of the previous year.-TradeArabia News Service