Welcome to the website of the Riyadh Group for British Business

Water and Electricity:-

Riyadh is a modern city and whilst staying in either hotels or one of the western oriented compounds there is little likelihood of having problems with either electricity or water. Elsewhere in town power cuts are rare but there are problems with the water supply.  Large areas do have connection to piped water but the supply can be infrequent and has to be topped up with water bought by the tanker-full. There is no mains Gas supply. Bottled gas can be found. Legislation introduced in 2008 will have an impact though on the price of water which is set to rise significantly.

Telecoms:-

Both land and mobile phones have become readily available over the last few years and the cost is dropping all the time. Saudi Telecom is the only provider, at the moment, for land-lines but both Saudi Telecom's Al Jawal and the newer Mobilly mobile networks have widespread coverage throughout the urban areas of the Kingdom, including the major highways.. Saudi Telecom’s mobile coverage is widespread and covers the majority of the urban areas and along the major roads, Mobilly is starting to put a more widespread coverage into operation.

Internet:-

A service is widely available and most hotels have a business lounge with internet access. Prepaid cards are available and can be used on a dial up system. Most of the first class hotels now have internet access in all rooms and many offer wireless connection. The Internet system is comparatively slow as all connections are routed through a central server where access to certain sites is restricted. Internet access in the Kingdom is blocked by KACST, short for King Abdulaziz City for Science and technology,  who have equipment for preventing access to websites deemed unsuitable for its citizens to view. For this reason many users avoid the restrictions by creating a virtual private network. (VPN)