Booming sales of mobile phones with 3G technology have spawned an underground porn-content business here. “A lot of Saudis from the ages of 15 through 50 all over the Kingdom are presently caught up in an out-of-control mobile buying spree,” said Ahmed Al-Marwan, salesman at Axiom Telecom in Riyadh, who has been working there for over two years. “Mobile sales have increased phenomenally in a short period of time,” he added. 3G's high data rates are ideal for downloading information from the Internet and sending and receiving large, multimedia files. 3G phones have broadband applications like video conferencing, receiving streaming video from the Web, sending and receiving faxes and instantly downloading e-mail messages with attachments. As a result, the phones are increasingly being used to download pornographic material from the Internet and make and receive arbitrary sexually suggestive calls from various commercial sites. In the past, the sale of mobiles with cameras and videos was banned in the Kingdom, but the ban was revoked a couple of years ago, leaving the field open for people to misuse technology. Even though Internet pornographic sites are blocked in the Kingdom, criminals have devised ways of getting around the blocks. In Riyadh, the clandestine ‘service providers' – usually Bangladeshis, Filipinos and Indians – operate in the downtown Batha area, supplying video clips and films with pornographic content. Some Bangladeshi workers sell their illegal blue film clips and stills for mobiles openly on the streets of Batha, in the ‘Bangla' section as it is called. One of these sellers said, “We make a huge profit on a daily basis from customers from all countries.” He said some workers triple their regular income and earn much more than their regular salaries in this way. “We have been doing this ‘business' for many years.” Sources said Filipino workers do the same in their section of town, selling the flims and clips to customers directly from their home. Indian workers also sell illegal material by a word-of-mouth network and through private sources and connections. Bangladeshi workers too are selling all manner of pornographic material directly from their music or video cassette stalls which are a front for their activities, the sources said. Often workers selling pornographic films download other X-rated material for their customer as an additional and free service. Areas in Riyadh, such as in Mursalat are teeming with Saudi customers of all ages. “We have a difficult time keeping up with the frenzy. On weekends we must hire additional help,” commented a salesman of a large mobile establishment. “Shops selling items other than mobiles, have to resort to ‘discount' gimmicks in order to stay ahead and not close down, to compete with the shops that sell pornographic material on the side,” he noted. In the wrong hands, advanced technology is creating unlimited degenerate possibilities and threatening the moral fiber of youngsters in the Kingdom. __
