Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has highlighted the telecommunications and information technology record figures achieved during Haj this year, praising the Kingdom's distinguished infrastructure which has served as many as 2.5 million pilgrims in a specific geographic and situational range.

This came in a report issued by ITU which said: "This year, 2.5 million people made the journey to Makkah; a journey that required dedicated information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure planning by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to ensure that both locals and pilgrims could access data-heavy mobile applications to capture and share special moments with families and friends around the world."

ITU also said that the provision of telecommunications and information technology services to these huge numbers represents a major logistical challenge, which the Kingdom has been able to overcome, thanks to its distinctive infrastructure in the field of communications and information technology, Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said.

ITU added that there were more than 32.5 thousand terabytes of data consumed by pilgrims – equivalent to watching over 13.3 million hours of HD 1080p video – an increase of 26 percent from last year. There was a 44.83 Mbps average download speed – an increase of 69 percent from last year.

The daily individual consumption of data was 352.5 megabytes, exceeding the global average of daily individual data consumption by 95 percent. More than 309 million calls, both national and international, were made by pilgrims with a 99 percent success rate.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is an international government organization and an agency specializing in communications and information technology that comes under the United Nations. It became one of the specialist UN agencies in 1947.

The ITU has 193 countries, over 800 private sector entities and academic institutions, as members. It functions according to the principle of international cooperation between governments (the member countries) and the private sector (members of the sector, subscribers and academic organizations).