While the Internet has developed into a pivotal tool in world communications, Saudi Arabia was quite late in connecting it to the public, compared with developed or even other developing countries (Al-Hajery 2004).KACST also "manages and operates the international lines through which the national Internet network is connected to the intemational network; it supervises the Intemet gateway and blocks undesirable sites" (MOCIT, 2003, p.8). The service provider acted as a Saudi exchange point, worked to raise public awareness of the Internet, formulated rules and regulations to govern the use of the Internet in the Saudi Arabian community, and operated the Saudi domain name system. Early on, STC was the only Internet service provider in Saudi Arabia. But in May 2005, Mobily, a new telecommunications company, launched the Saudi Arabian mobile market. Three years later, August 2008, Zain joined the Saudi Arabian mobile market as another ISP, introducing 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) services. Also in 2008, Saudi Telecom started the 3G
deployment process, promising reliability and speed, as well as better digital communication services (Chanchary and Islam 2011). Although, the Internet was only made available in 1999,
Saudi Arabia has grown greatly in this area, especially in
Q) Springer
20	TechTrends (2016) 60:19-20
 

terms of connectivity. There has been a notable increase in the number of Internet users in Saudi Arabia. For instance, the total number of Internet subscribers in Saudi Arabia increased dramatically from 100000 internet users in 1999 to one million internet users in 2001. At the end of 2013, that number reached 16.5 million Internet users, representing 55.1 % of the country's total population (CITC, 2014; MOCIT, 2003). Alebaikan and Troudi (2010) stated that "it is estimated that Internet use will continue growing rapidly in Saudi Arabia, which raises an issue of providing new learning strategies that include use of technology" (p.5 1).Springer
Alshahrani A. Hamed is a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL. Please direct correspondence regarding this column entry to him via email to: halshahrani@niu.edu.Later, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), an independent scientific organization administratively reporting to the Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, provided internet service to KFUPM using a 64 kbps channel from the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KSHRC).Hamed A. Alshahrani halshahrani@niu.edu
Northem Illinois University, DeKalb, USA
On March 1997, the Council of Ministers officially issued Decree Number 163.Qualifications for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were announced by KACST in December 1998, and KACST cooperatively worked with the Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC) to provide the necessary communication lines (Al-Hajery 2004).Faculty, for example, use email and develop classroom home pages that provide information about classes, including the syllabus, general instructions, exercises, assignments, examples, useful links, and literature references to facilitate the teaching process.Information and telecommunication technology in Saudi Arabia (Report No. WSIS/PC- 3/CONTR/25-E), World Summit on the information society, Geneva.Riyadh: Al Obeikan.