The Saudi government has awarded leading telecom operator Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) the contract to build, run and operate the second phase of the Government Secure Network (GSN) in the Kingdom. Saudi Information Minister Mohammed Jamil Mullah signed the contract on Tuesday with Mobily chairman Abdulaziz Al Saghyir and CEO Khalid Al Kaf. The project will serve a great number of government institutions nationwide. It will also serve the requirements of the e-Government project “Yasser”, and will form the backbone of many future e-government projects and services. Mullah thanked the project's stakeholders and urged them to back the project and also asked government institutions to extend co-operation for timely completion of these projects. Al Saghyir said the fact that Mobily was being tapped to implement phase two of the project reflected the ministry's confidence in Mobily's capabilities of providing solutions, applications and projects that would help businesses and government implement world-class projects. “Mobily will help build a comprehensive framework of service and data exchange among government facilities that will be highly reliable and dependable,” he added. Al Kaf said that Mobily will build a secure network that will guarantee the confidentiality and availability of data, while streamlining the flow of information among government facilities and helping them improve their services and introduce new ones. “Having an integrated, single-point network that connects the government will help cut the costs involved in each facility running its own network,” he said. “A single network will also cut infrastructure costs and help achieve efficiency by making resources available across the entire government,” he added. Mobily, STC's stongest rival, posted a better-than-expected 35 percent in fourth-quarter net profit to a record SR1.05 billion.
