Technology Unit
The Technology Unit remains a pivotal element within stc group. The Unit is committed to managing and optimizing stc group’s technological infrastructure to support strategic growth and elevate business operations. It plays a central role in driving innovation, improving operational efficiency, and keeping stc group at the forefront of industry leadership and competitiveness.
Strategic focus and alignment with stc group strategy 2025
stc group’s technology strategy is focused on strengthening technology leadership, fostering a sustainable innovation ecosystem and accelerating the adoption of emerging technologies. By optimizing assets, nurturing digital talent and enhancing operational efficiency, the strategy positions stc group to capture long-term value-creation opportunities, fully aligned with the stc group strategy 2025 and the Kingdom’s national digital ambitions.
Technology strategy
5G expansion vision: stc group remains committed to maintaining its leadership in 5G coverage and speed across the nation, aligning with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. Therefore, stc group plans to:
Infrastructure
The Technology Unit is accelerating infrastructure modernization and simplification to adapt to a rapidly evolving market and emerging technology trends. These efforts have significantly enhanced customer experience, achieving 63% 5G coverage across the Kingdom and 99% 4G coverage as at year-end 2025.
stc group made significant strides in infrastructure development and modernization throughout 2025, achieving notable milestones that enhanced connectivity and customer experience. A total of 152,769 households were connected to fiber through FTTH projects, bringing the cumulative FTTH connections to more than 3.75 million households.
In the 5G domain, stc group commissioned 1,261 new 5G sites, reaching an accumulated total of 10,803 live 5G sites. Additionally, over 1,800 integrated 5G second-layer sites (N40) were implemented, the number of 5G layers across the network has reached over 26,590 carriers. 2,133 layers of them from the new acquired N77 band. To support these advancements, 8,858 fiber backhaul connections for 5G sites were successfully established.
As part of its infrastructure upgrade initiative, stc group decommissioned 534 legacy nodes in 2025, recovering an additional 709 m2 of floor space and saving 9.37 GW per year of power. The full shutdown of the 3G network was also completed, while more than 2,930 sites were upgraded with L900 activation in 2025, reaching a cumulative total of 16,199 sites. Coverage enhancements included the deployment of over 4,500 5G and 16,000 4G inbuilding antennas across major cities and landmark buildings in the Kingdom, boosting in-building coverage.
5G integrated sites
152,769
Number of FTTH households 2025
2025 by the numbers
835
Employees hired
89.6%
Saudization rate for stc KSA and its local subsidiaries
250
Cooperative training program trainees
2,875
Female employees
59
People with disabilities
568
Early retirement program beneficiaries
Group Human Resources Unit
In 2025, the Human Resources (HR) function achieved a significant milestone in the refreshed human capital strategy that empowered the business and leaders on how decisions are made, risks are managed, and talents are developed across stc group. HR sharpened the governance, improved data quality, and ensured leaders have clearer visibility into workforce dynamics, succession readiness and capability needs.
Throughout 2025, HR played a central role in supporting major organizational shifts, ranging from operating model activation and business integration to workforce optimization and leadership development, while maintaining stability, engagement and compliance. The Group Human Resources Unit (GHRU) placed particular emphasis on moving from activity to impact: ensuring that frameworks, tools and programs translated into better decisions and stronger execution on the ground. Focusing on workforce productivity and organizational effectiveness, by enhancing employee experience and fostering a high-trust, agile workplace aligned with stc group’s strategic objectives and future vision, the HR function supported higher engagement, improved collaboration and more effective execution across stc group.
Through these efforts, stc group continues to reinforce its position as an employer of choice, capable of attracting top talent, empowering future leaders and fostering a workplace that supports growth, ensuring the workforce is confident, capable and ready to work alongside AI technologies to achieve stc group’s long-term strategic ambitions.
Shared Services Unit
stc group’s Shared Services Unit represents a transformational business model designed to unify and integrate support functions, providing comprehensive, high-quality and easily accessible services. By optimizing the use of strategic resources, expanding the service product portfolio and integrating core systems, Shared Services aims to enhance spending efficiency, boost productivity and improve transparency. This approach strengthens the strategic alignment of stc group and contributes significantly to its overall effectiveness.
The Shared Services Unit plays a critical role in achieving stc group’s strategic objectives by driving organizational growth and enhancing business efficiency. It delivers a diverse range of essential services, including human resources, training, supply chain, procurement, facility and fleet management, safety and security, hospitality, property management, districts services, partner management, office automation and local content. These integrated offerings enable stc group to operate more cohesively and effectively, fostering a streamlined and agile organization prepared to meet evolving business needs.
Facility and fleet services
As part of its ongoing efforts to enhance operational efficiency and service integration, the Unit successfully increased the capacity of buildings and facilities to accommodate employees of stc group’s subsidiaries at the headquarters, improving the work environment and employee experience. This has contributed to the optimal utilization of assets, strengthened institutional integration and enriched the shared work experience. Through this integration of functions and services, the Unit has enabled stc group to operate with a higher level of synergy, efficiency and readiness to adapt to business requirements and future challenges.
Employee services
During 2025, efforts continued to enhance the efficient and effective delivery of core human resources services for stc group employees. This ongoing commitment ensured the smooth and uninterrupted continuity of operations. Key aspects of this approach included improving digital technology development processes for HR services, as well as strengthening employee well-being programs and ensuring full compliance with all regulations and policies.
As part of the HR Services team’s continuous efforts to enhance employee experience and improve the work environment, the team was awarded the ISO 9001 certification, reaffirming their commitment to quality and excellence in the field of human resources services.
academy from stc
academy from stc plays a central role in implementing stc group’s strategy by developing leadership, digital and technical capabilities that enhance productivity and drive sustainable growth. It brings together assessment, learning and knowledge-sharing within an integrated operational model that promotes excellence and supports stc group’s digital transformation journey.
The academy’s programs aligned with structured career paths designed to help employees gain the right skills and strengthen their readiness to achieve business objectives. These programs cover key areas such as leadership, data and artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and the Internet of Things, contributing to the development and retention of internal talent.
Through its assessment services, the academy measures employee capabilities and directly links development efforts to business priorities, enabling better workforce planning and focused investment in critical skills.
In 2025, the academy launched the Capability Enhancement Program, a new initiative aimed at upgrading employee skills and competencies, improving overall performance and promoting a culture of continuous learning to ensure talent development remains aligned with stc group’s future direction.
Local content (rawafed program)
Following the launch of rawafed local content strategy for 2025, it represents a new roadmap to maximize long-term economic and social impact, through its four strategic pillars.
- Localize spending by promoting contracts with local small and medium-sized enterprises, driving the growth of national industries and contributing to their development.
- Attract investment of high-quality investments in communications and information technology and fostering opportunities to localize value-added industries to strengthen supply chain sustainability and create economic opportunities.
- Foster innovation by supporting local innovation, motivating entrepreneurs and promoting research on emerging technologies.
- Enrich capabilities developing national skills and capabilities through training, qualification programs and knowledge transfer. It also supports Saudi talent by creating new job opportunities that will contribute to the digital economy.
To reinforce the strategy’s messages and ensure stakeholder alignment, rawafed launched an integrated awareness campaign, featuring an introductory video, leadership messages and multi-channel communications across internal and external platforms. The campaign achieved over 65,000 video views and 31 media appearances, strengthening rawafed’s visibility as a key enabler of local content within stc group.
*The figure presents how stc group’s local content strategy has advanced to sustain its leadership in local content within the ICT sector.
rawafed performance for 2025
This year, rawafed recorded a remarkable increase in its local content score, reaching 50.69%, a substantial improvement from the previous year and surpassing the ICT sector benchmark of 41%. This achievement reflects stc group’s continuous progress and steadfast commitment to advancing local content and strengthening its national impact. The total local spending also exceeded % 17 billion, with annual spending of more than % 7 billion on local workforce wages, in addition to spending more than % 41 million on training programs to enhance the capabilities of national talents.
Regarding local partners and suppliers, the number of local content certificates reached 1,270 by 2025, while spending on local goods and services increased to 36%. Meanwhile, at the national level, rawafed participated in the Public Investment Fund Private Sector Forum, showcasing key investment opportunities and highlighting industries and digital solutions in areas such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and other future technologies.
Furthermore, rawafed organized the Tomoh meeting in collaboration with Monsha’at, attended by over 80 SMEs, where key investment opportunities, supplier registration processes and support services for SME growth and competitiveness were presented, reaffirming stc group’s role in empowering this sector and supporting Saudi Vision 2030.
2020–2025
- SME support
- Industry localization
- Digitization and innovation
- Workforce development
2025–2030
- Localize spending
- Attract investment
- Foster innovation
- Enrich capabilities
