PARIS (Telecompaper) — Mobile operator Beeline Uzbekistan has introduced a promotion for customers using its roaming services in Saudi Arabia during the Hajj pilgrimage. The promotion is available using services on the network of mobile operators Zain and STC.

Incoming calls are on offer for UZS4,210 instead of 10,104 per minute, the rate of outgoing calls within Saudi Arabia has been reduced from UZS7,578 to 4,210 per minute, while the rate of outgoing calls to Uzbekistan now amounts to UZS4,210 instead of 15,156 per minute. The price of a text message has declined from UZS2,526 to 421, while mobile internet now costs UZS4,210 per MB instead of 82,768.

The service is available only to prepaid payment system subscribers for all tariff plans. Outgoing international calls in roaming are charged at standard cost.

The promotion will run until 27 February.

Since independence, religion, particularly Islam, has taken on an altogether new role in the nation-building process in Uzbekistan. The government now embraces Islam as a national heritage and a moral guideline. This has meant an upsurge in Islamic activity, but also, after a few years of tumult in the early 1990s, a tightening of government control of religious education and practice.

Uzbekistan remains a secular state. The Uzbek constitution from 1992 provides that religious assemblies should be separated from the state and that the state should not meddle in their affairs. At the same time the country has an elaborate official religious structure. The Spiritual Directorate for Central Asia and Kazakhstan (the SADUM of Soviet times) remains, but has been reformed and renamed the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan.