Two Saudi men have each paid tens of thousands of dollars in an auction for cellular phone lines with unique, easy-to-memorize numbers, reported The Associated Press, quoting the daily Al Jazirah.
The two were among tens of thousands who entered an auction launched by the Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC) to sell the two GSM lines, said the paper.
The first buyer, from Riyadh, paid 320,000 riyals ($85,300) for the phone line, while the other man, from the western city of Medina, paid 150,000 riyals ($40,000) for his ‘special’ number, said the paper.
The company had placed advertisements last month in local papers announcing the auction, said AP.
The regular cost of a GSM telephone line in the kingdom is 1,500 riyals ($400).
STC currently has over a million subscribers on its GSM dual band (900/1800) network and is expected to grow over two million in the coming years – Albawaba.com
