Saudi Arabia’s Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) has launched the third phase of the free local roaming service and expanded the service to 691 more villages in the Eastern Province, Northern Borders region, and Al-Jouf.
As part of the Kingdom’s digital transformation plans to ensure the availability of broadband services all across the country, CITC has completed the first phase of the free-roaming service by covering parts of the Asir region, followed by the second phase, covering the Riyadh and Al-Qassim regions.
The CITC said that the completion of the service in 21,000 villages covered by telecommunications services in the rest of the regions in the Kingdom by the end of 2021.
The local roaming service includes all services such as (voice services, Internet services, short text messages “SMS”).
Meanwhile, CITC published a public consultation on “Information Memorandum for Spectrum Auction of 2100 MHz for Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN)". The Commission intends to hold this auction by the end of the year 2021, for 2100 MHz (30*2 MHz) band, as part of the implementation process for “Spectrum Outlook for Commercial and Innovative Use 2021-2023" in Saudi Arabia.
Furthermore, the document aims to get inputs on the auction's terms and conditions, eligibility criteria, initial prices, as well as the application process.
CITC pointed that the upcoming auction is part of its strategic role as a digital regulator, in empowering the role of the frequency spectrum in the national digital transformation of the Kingdom, adopting the latest generation of satellite technologies, and facilitating a hosting environment for NTN technologies such as 5G - non-terrestrial networks (5G – NTN), mobile satellite services (MSS), internet on an airplane (A2G), and internet of things via satellite (MSS-IoT).
