In recognizing its role as a leading national company and by taking a keen interest in diffusing an Internet culture and broadband services in the Saudi community, Saudi Telecom (STC) has recently launched a mega price reduction campaign for Afaq DSL Shamel which started on Tuesday. With this move STC is meeting the increasing customers' demands to obtain competitive prices of Internet services both locally and regionally while also maintaining high quality, speed, and unique service from Afaq DSL Shamel. This service combines both a DSL and an open internet connection throughout the day from a single source in one phone bill. Eng. Saad Dhafer Al-Qahtani, VP of Home Services at STC, said the new reductions aim at meeting the customers' needs everywhere in the Kingdom and encourage them to subscribe to this service. “We reduced Saudi Net prepaid cards prices up to 76 percent which also reflected to the reducation on Afaq Shamel prices. And with these reductions on Afaq DSL Shamel subscription prices everyone can enjoy DSL Internet services around the Kingdom,” he added. DSL service prices now at everyone's reach: 128 kilobyte per second speed is now for only SR109; 256 kilobyte per second speed is now for SR149; 512 kilobyte per second speed for SR199, while 1 megabyte per second speed is priced at SR299, and 2 megabyte per second speed is at SR459. Other speeds of 4, 8, and 10 megabytes per second are also available. “This offer reaffirms our company's continues interest in introducing the best services with the best prices, making STC always a step ahead. DSL service is witnessing a huge interest from our customers, where Afaq DSL subscribers reached 650 thousand and we project that this number will reach one million by the end of 2008. Afaq DSL Shamel customers increased to 180,000 subscribers benefiting from after-sales and technical support services all in one package which includes: Afaq DSL line, Saudi Net prepaid cards in addition to having one single invoice which helps the customer to deal with one source while receiving Internet service around the clock in addition to the technical support through 907,” Al-Qahtani added. STC is making huge investments in order to expand its network and deliver internet services to all areas of the Kingdom. The company recently upgraded its infrastructure for Afaq DSL services to increase capacity. The Internet network comprises 43,000 kilometers of fiber optic network to transfer data to through the STC portal and through special cables to the customers' homes. This provides safely connection and real speed that makes download speed stable and not affected by the number of users at the same time only for Afaq DSL Shamel customers. __
