Makkah, May 31, 2021, SPA -- The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology for Telecom and Infrastructure, Eng. Bassam Al-Bassam, has inspected the internal mobile phone network coverage project for the third expansion of the Grand Mosque, which aims to provide an advanced digital infrastructure in the Mosque. This project is part of the Saudi Vision 2030 goals and represents an attractive investment environment to develop smart service applications offered to the Mosque’s pilgrims and visitors. The project will enhance the level of mobile phone services, securing better coverage to accommodate the expected increase in the numbers of pilgrims in the future, improving the user experience by raising mobile Internet speeds, reducing reliance on external towers, and improving the urban landscape in the vicinity of the Two Holy Mosques. The project, in its first phase, includes coverage of all the floors of the third expansion building of the Mosque, in addition to the basement floor, the basement floor in the northern squares, and the Mataf (Circumambulation) area, which resulted in improved network indicators, bringing the average data download speed to 200 megabits per second. Eng. Al-Bassam explained that upon completion of all project components in the Grand Mosque through the neutral host model, the project will become one of the largest internal coverage projects for the mobile phone network in the world, adding that the project aims to serve more than 1.5 million pilgrims and visitors, utilizing an installed network of 4,000 broadcasting antennas, with more than 800 kilometers of cables, as well as the installation of 1,300 repeaters. --SPA 14:51 LOCAL TIME 11:51 GMT 0013 www.spa.gov.sa/w1564422