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Makkah's Grand Mosque Gets Improved Connectivity, AI Applications through High-Tech Upgrade

A view of the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia. (SPA)
A view of the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia. (SPA)
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Makkah's Grand Mosque Gets Improved Connectivity, AI Applications through High-Tech Upgrade

A view of the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia. (SPA)
A view of the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia. (SPA)

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and the Royal Commission for Makkah City and Holy Sites (RCMC) announced that Makkah's Grand Mosque has undergone a significant technology upgrade to better serve worshippers.

The project, carried out in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance, the General Authority for the Care of the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques, and national technology and digital companies, aims to improve the worshippers’ experience through advanced infrastructure, AI applications, and the innovative neutral host model.

The project leverages 5G capabilities and AI to facilitate crowd and vehicle management, improve asset management, and implement smart waste disposal systems.

The upgraded infrastructure opens the door to the provision of virtual medical clinic services at the Grand Mosque.

Utilizing the Internet of Things (IoT), the project enables real-time monitoring of the Zamzam well's water level and production.

Download speeds within the Grand Mosque have tripled, reaching over 1 gigabit per second, thanks to network upgrades on the ground floor of the third Saudi expansion building.

The project utilizes the neutral host model, a crucial element to providing advanced technical infrastructure based on 5G, data, and AI. The model enables multiple mobile network operators, including STC, Mobily, and Zain, to share the physical infrastructure within the Grand Mosque, ensuring that all visitors have access to the highest level of communication services.

This project, implemented by the Advanced Communications & Electronic Systems Company (ACES), is an example of a collaborative effort to achieve the goals of Saudi Vision 2030.

Deputy Minister for Telecom and Infrastructure at MCIT Eng. Bassam Al-Bassam said: "There is nothing more honorable than serving visitors of the Grand Mosque. We are continuously working with our partners to provide the latest technologies and improve the visitor experience."

RCMC CEO Eng. Saleh Al-Rasheed highlighted the project's contribution to "providing an advanced digital infrastructure in the Grand Mosque" and "raising the level of communication services" for all visitors.

This technology upgrade is proof of a commitment to utilize cutting-edge solutions for a more efficient and connected Grand Mosque, ultimately serving millions of worshippers throughout the year.

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Technology

UK Looks to Restart Cooperation after US Suspends Tech Deal

Pedestrians walk across Westminster Bridge as early morning fog covers the streets of London on December 17, 2025. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP)
Pedestrians walk across Westminster Bridge as early morning fog covers the streets of London on December 17, 2025. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP)
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UK Looks to Restart Cooperation after US Suspends Tech Deal

Pedestrians walk across Westminster Bridge as early morning fog covers the streets of London on December 17, 2025. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP)
Pedestrians walk across Westminster Bridge as early morning fog covers the streets of London on December 17, 2025. (Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP)

The UK government on Wednesday said it was focused on resuming talks promptly after the United States suspended implementation of a tech cooperation deal with Britain.

The deal was signed during US President Donald Trump's pomp-filled state visit to the UK in September.

But on Tuesday Michael Kratsios, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said on X that the UK must make "substantial progress" on trade talks for the deal to resume.

The US and UK have been trying to implement the "Economic Prosperity Deal," agreed in May and one of the first international agreements signed after Trump threatened the world with punishing tariffs on goods entering the United States.

The US-UK Technology Prosperity Deal agreed in September 2025 was a non-binding agreement to sit alongside the broader Economic Prosperity Deal.

It was designed to align the two countries on tech innovation while spurring mostly private-sector investment, Agence France Presse reported.

Following the White House announcement, a UK government spokesperson said: "We look forward to resuming work on this partnership as quickly as possible... and working together to help shape the emerging technologies of the future."

Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle held trade talks with US counterparts in Washington DC last week to progress the Economic Prosperity Deal, the spokesperson said.

"They celebrated the success of the recent pharma deal and both sides agreed to continue further negotiations next year."

According to the Financial Times, US officials have become increasingly frustrated with Britain's lack of willingness to address non-tariff barriers, including rules and regulations governing food and industrial goods.

Technology

With Freebies, OpenAI, Google Vie for Indian Users and Training Data

FILE PHOTO: A message reading "AI artificial intelligence", a keyboard, and robot hands are seen in this illustration taken January 27, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A message reading "AI artificial intelligence", a keyboard, and robot hands are seen in this illustration taken January 27, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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With Freebies, OpenAI, Google Vie for Indian Users and Training Data

FILE PHOTO: A message reading "AI artificial intelligence", a keyboard, and robot hands are seen in this illustration taken January 27, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A message reading "AI artificial intelligence", a keyboard, and robot hands are seen in this illustration taken January 27, 2025. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

OpenAI, Google and Perplexity have begun an unprecedented fight for artificial intelligence users in India, rolling out freebies in a strategy seen as a way to harvest troves of multilingual training data in the world's most populous nation.

India is the second-biggest smartphone market with 730 million devices. On average, Indians consume 21 gigabytes of data each month, paying 9.2 cents per gigabyte, one of the world's lowest mobile data rates. To lure price-conscious users, Google in November started giving its $400 Gemini AI Pro subscription for free for 18 months to 500 million customers of Reliance Jio, India's biggest telecom player.

Last week, it added India to dozens of countries where it is offering its heavily discounted "AI Plus" package. OpenAI has also made its ChatGPT Go plan, which offers extended but not unlimited usage compared with existing plans, free for a year.

The plan incurs charges in more than 100 countries and was $54 in India before being made free to everyone in the country in November, Reuters reported.

Just like Google's AI Pro, the free package is only available in India.

Early download data suggests a jump in usage due to the free plans, with daily active users of ChatGPT in India surging 607% year-on-year to 73 million as of last week - more than double the number in the US, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower compiled for Reuters.

Gemini's daily users in India rose 15% from when it launched the Reliance Jio offer in November to touch 17 million last week, compared to 3 million in the US, the data showed.

Perplexity, meanwhile, has made its Pro tool - priced at $200 a year globally - free for a year for users of Indian telecom company Airtel. It says the plan gives unlimited access to its most advanced research tools.

India now accounts for more than a third of Perplexity's global daily active users, up from just 7% last year, Sensor Tower data showed. OpenAI, Perplexity and Google did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

TRAINING FILLS DATA GAPS
OpenAI's India executive, Pragya Misra, has said on social media the company's decision to make ChatGPT Go free was part of its "continued India-first commitment" and to make tools more accessible to everyone.

Five AI analysts, however, said the freebies strategy would help companies gain from India's linguistic diversity to secure crucial data for AI training.

They view the training data generated by Indian users, characterized by a mix of languages and dialects, as a critical stress test that will help AI models master complex communication patterns that are largely absent from the existing data. Free plans "fill gaps in AI training data sets that currently lack information on user behavior patterns in the region," said Sagar Vishnoi, co-founder at AI think tank Future Shift Labs.

FREEBIES WORK IN INDIA, OFTEN
Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance, which has partnered with Gemini, has repeatedly used aggressive pricing to boost its customer base. Its telecom unit now has more than 500 million users, after luring customers at its 2016 launch with months of free data and voice services.

Reliance and Disney offered cricket streaming for free on their India platforms, before merging their India media operations.

ChatGPT is seeing high app usage -- with 46% of its monthly users opening the app daily in India in November, compared to 20% for Perplexity and 14% for Gemini, Sensor Tower's data showed.

Anees Hassan, a PhD student in Hyderabad, is using the free ChatGPT and Gemini plans for three hours a day to find citations, refine his writing and generate images for presentations.

"The free plan was not good enough as I used to hit chat limit caps faster," said Hassan, 33.

Still, he is also aware that freebies sometimes come with costs.

"I am concerned about data harvesting, so I have used the opt-out feature to stop sharing my data for AI training," he added.

Technology

Alswaha: Saudi Arabia Leads International Indicators, Efforts to Bridge AI Gaps

Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha speaks at the event in New York. (SPA)
Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha speaks at the event in New York. (SPA)
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Alswaha: Saudi Arabia Leads International Indicators, Efforts to Bridge AI Gaps

Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha speaks at the event in New York. (SPA)
Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha speaks at the event in New York. (SPA)

Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha stressed on Tuesday that the Kingdom’s achievements represent the greatest digital success story of the 21st century.

This was possible by the support of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and the direct enablement by Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, reflecting their ambitious vision for building a comprehensive technological future.

The minister made his remarks from New York during his participation in the high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on the overall review of the implementation of the outcomes of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

Alswaha said that progress in the information society is reflected worldwide, with the number of internet users rising from around 800 million to nearly 6 billion.

The Kingdom ranked first globally on the ICT Development Index (IDI) issued by the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and made remarkable progress in empowering women in the digital world, with female participation reaching approximately 36%, he revealed.

He highlighted that the foremost challenge today lies in bridging the gaps in artificial intelligence (AI), namely the computing gap, the data gap, and the algorithm gap.

Alswaha stated that the Kingdom leveraged its capabilities to boost advanced computing power and launch national language models that help close the data gap in the Arab world, including the AI model “ALLaM.”

Moreover, he noted global scientific achievements, such as Saudi scientist Omar Yaghi winning the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, reflecting Saudi Arabia’s scientific presence on the international stage.

He stressed that the achievements reflect the profound impact of the support from King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed in consolidating the Kingdom’s global standing, enhancing its pivotal role in leading a more inclusive technological future, harnessing technologies for human benefit, supporting sustainable development, and aligning with the world’s aspirations for a more advanced and integrated era.