Saudi Arabia's ISPs - Related sites, articles and links

Other web sites have articles and news announcements on the same subject as this page, but are not as comprehensive. You may want to check them out yourself.

•  As of late 2004, High Speed Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) are available to consumers. If you read Arabic, you can check what others have experienced. Here are the prices and quality of providers, and here are details on how to subscribe, and communication costs.
• Trade Port (according to the U.S. Commercial Service in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) article on 22 November 1998 on prices, Full list of licensed ISP's, contact names, telephone numbers, fax numbers, addresses, ...etc. (Note: The Trade Port article expired on 22 May 1999. If you can not access it at the above link, try this Google cache page.This may have also expired, but ...)
• An article in March 1998 by Grey E. Burkhart provides good insight into the general telecommunication scene and its history in Saudi Arabia, leading to establishing internet nodes prior to the current commercial services available to the general public.
• The Saudi 2000 web site has a page, in Arabic, with the full list of ISP's, including telephone and fax numbers.
• B.J. Herbison's page of Saudi Arabia ISPs provides links to other sites.
• Riyadh@Net, a site by Al Riyadh Newspaper has a List of Internet Service Providers, in Arabic.
• Saudi ISP Discussion Page - Arabic If you can read Arabic and have an Arabic capable web browser, you may want to visit this page. You can vote for which ISP you think is best, and view what others have voted for (although the results doesn't seem credible to me). The strange thing about this site is that there is no indication on who created it, nor there is any means of contacting him (or her? or them?) via e-mail or any other way.
• PC Magazine Middle East had an article in their February 1999 issue about the launch of public internet service in Saudi Arabia, some technical details, initial prices, ...etc.
• Arab.Net has a small list built by ISP's entering their own data themselves. They list Zajil and Naseej.
• Saudi Arabia's Internet Service Unit has a brief page on how the internet is set up.
• Internet News article 18 November 1998 on prices set in Saudi Arabia for Internet Access.
• A 24 January 1999 article on Reuters and Nando Media on the start of Internet Access to the public in Saudi Arabia.
• A Wired News 8 July 1999 Article on the Internet in the Middle East. The report lacks some accuracy (e.g. indirectly states that Saudi Arabian net surfers has access only to a pre-approved list of sites, which is false. See more details and links here).
• Some criticism has been voiced about countries (including Saudi Arabia) practicing filtering and having a high cost of access. You can find these on this page.
• A web site in NewZealand on Saudi ISPs, with links to pricing pages within the web sites of most ISPs.