The Continual Demand for Legacy Telecoms Equipment in Saudi Arabia
The Saudi telecoms sector is the largest in the Middle East, with continual growth since the liberalisation of telecommunications services in 2003. There has been a shift of fixed broadband from ADSL to fibre and thanks to government funding, internet coverage is set to be available for the whole country. This will also support business development to help to increase productivity and further strengthen the economy.
With 54 million mobile subscribers, mobile broadband contracts far outweigh fixed ones. However, the biggest growth area is in high-end services for corporate and individual customers. Although the trend is towards a decline in fixed telephony, demand continues for telephone hardware, particularly manufacturer-discontinued legacy telecoms equipment.
MF Communications recently received a $45k order to supply Ericsson and Aastra telephones and hardware to a maintainer in Saudi Arabia. This same maintainer also ordered $18k of Nortel and Avaya equipment on another occasion. All of these were legacy telecoms equipment.
Traditional PBX systems have been around for a long time and have proven a reliable and effective form of communication for medium to large enterprises. Many companies choose to continue maintaining their PBX rather than venturing into the unknown by changing or upgrading to a cloud-based solution.
