Cellphone firms freeze pre-paid roaming service in Saudi Arabia

The country’s leading mobile phone service providers have suspended their pre-paid roaming service in Saudi Arabia effective Jan. 31 this year at the request of Saudi Telecom.

Pending the resolution of commercial issues with SaudiTel Company, text roaming services of Philippine mobile carriers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have been temporarily suspended.

However, international roaming in the KSA will continue to be available for post-paid subscribers, Globe Telecom announced. Affected customers can also contact their loved ones through other means such as IDD and international text messaging service.

Saudi Telecom’s request to bar the service was due to its current review of prepaid service in general and is not company specific.

Globe started offering international roaming service to its post-paid and pre-paid subscribers in 1995 and 2002, respectively and has over 200 partners to date. International roaming allows Globe customers to send and receive calls and text messages when abroad while keeping their existing cellular phone numbers.

For its part, Smart Communications said that as a result, their prepaid subscribers are unable to send or receive text messages while roaming in Saudi Arabia.

However, postpaid Smart subscribers roaming in Saudi Arabia can continue to make and receive voice calls.

This situation arose because unknown parties have been reportedly selling subscriber identification modules (SIM) packs and top-up prepaid cards of Philippine mobile carriers openly in Saudi Arabia.

"Smart has not authorized this activity and we are not condoning its continued practice. We are cooperating with SaudiTel to resolve this issue so text roaming services for Smart pre-paid subscribers will be reactivated," Smart legal services and carrier business group head Rogelio Quevedo said. — Mary Ann Reyes