Saudi Telecom ‘seriously considering’ selling mobile towers



Saudi Telecom Company, the nation’s biggest phone operator, is considering a sale of its mobile transmitter towers, its chief executive said.

Margins for traditional telecom services are not what they used to be and Saudi Telecom is looking for ways to diversify revenue and boost efficiency, chief executive Khaled Bin Hussain Biyari said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. One way to do that is to create a company that would sell the towers.

“We are seriously considering it, we are doing our internal assessment in terms of what value it will bring us,” he said. “It’s not about the money. It’s about creating efficiency in operation.”

The economic slowdown amid a slump in oil prices “is a fact” though the company in the oil-rich kingdom is still growing, Biyari said. Saudi Telecom has invested “heavily” in cloud technology, he said.

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Name: ARDH Collective
Based: Dubai
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
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Series info

Test series schedule 1st Test, Abu Dhabi: Sri Lanka won by 21 runs; 2nd Test, Dubai: Play starts at 2pm, Friday-Tuesday

ODI series schedule 1st ODI, Dubai: October 13; 2nd ODI, Abu Dhabi: October 16; 3rd ODI, Abu Dhabi: October 18; 4th ODI, Sharjah: October 20; 5th ODI, Sharjah: October 23

T20 series schedule 1st T20, Abu Dhabi: October 26; 2nd T20, Abu Dhabi: October 27; 3rd T20, Lahore: October 29

Tickets Available at www.q-tickets.com

Stat Fourteen Fourteen of the past 15 Test matches in the UAE have been decided on the final day. Both of the previous two Tests at Dubai International Stadium have been settled in the last session. Pakistan won with less than an hour to go against West Indies last year. Against England in 2015, there were just three balls left.

Key battle - Azhar Ali v Rangana Herath Herath may not quite be as flash as Muttiah Muralitharan, his former spin-twin who ended his career by taking his 800th wicket with his final delivery in Tests. He still has a decent sense of an ending, though. He won the Abu Dhabi match for his side with 11 wickets, the last of which was his 400th in Tests. It was not the first time he has owned Pakistan, either. A quarter of all his Test victims have been Pakistani. If Pakistan are going to avoid a first ever series defeat in the UAE, Azhar, their senior batsman, needs to stand up and show the way to blunt Herath.

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