STC reaches 100 million global subscribers

Saudi Arabia’s STC announced it has exceeded 100 million subscribers worldwide, however, a breakdown of subscribers by country has not been disclosed by the operator.

The Arab world’s largest telecom company by market value has expanded aggressively in the past two years outside the kingdom’s borders to now have operations in Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, India, South Africa, Kuwait and Bahrain. The operator’s most recent foray was the launch of mobile services in Bahrain under the brand Viva.

STC posted a Q409 net profit of SAR 2.94 billion (US$784 million), an increase of 154 per cent year-on-year from SAR 1.16 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. The state-owned integrated operator attributed this partly to the floating in November of a 25 per cent stake in Malaysian subsidiary Maxis, which added SAR 684 million to its coffers.