Saudi Arabia's Zain to Invest USD 1.2 Billion in Network Expansion and Upgrade

With an aim to reinvigorate its overall network, Zain Saudi Arabia (Zain KSA) has announced the signing of network expansion and upgrade agreements worth 4.5 billion SAR (US $1.2 billion) with five leading global technology companies.

These network expansion and upgrade agreements are directed towards enhancing Zain KSA’s customer experience and to improve and expand Zain’s network capacity, coverage and speed. The agreements were signed with five major international technology companies: Huawei, Nokia, NEC, Cisco, and Alcatel Lucent.

Speaking about the development, Hassan Kabbani, CEO of Zain KSA said, “Today, we are pleased to announce a four and a half billion Saudi Riyal investment into our customers.  Saudi Arabia is ranked among the top 5 countries in world for a digitally engaged society. We are proud that each and every day, more people chose to join Zain, having heard about the superior customer experience that we offer.  Of course, more customers means that we need more capacity. This was achieved thanks to the support of Zain Group and the confidence of our shareholders.”

Furthermore, “Today’s announcement is all about building for the future to anticipate the need for more capacity.  We are also expanding our 4G LTE network, making it available to more people, in more places across the Kingdom.”

Kabbani added “I invite everyone to try Zain and discover our innovative packages, leading customer experience and the quality and speed of our network”.

Eng. Sultan Abdulaziz Al-Deghaither, acting Chief Technical Officer, said “We aim to provide 4G LTE coverage to over 90% of the population, providing existing and new customers with real high-speed mobile internet connectivity. Since its launch, Zain KSA has always operated a very modern telecommunications network, today we are announcing the expansion of our state of the art network to accommodate the exponential growth of data traffic that we see.”

It is worth noting that Zain KSA was the first operator in the Middle East region to launch 4G network in September 2011.