Get ready to play the STC roulette!

ALKHOBAR, 30 December — Saudi Telecom’s new advertisement is amazing. In it they talk about how STC’s subscribers can use various technologies to pay their landline or mobile bills without having to stand in a queue at a bank. Sounds wondrous especially the last line of the ad which reads: "You then pay your bill automatically from your bank account without waiting for your phone bill to be mailed to you."

Now for those of you who might not understand, STC is baldly stating that we can just give them our hard-earned cash without knowing what we are paying for. It is important to remember that STC does have a horrid little policy that they will not discuss discrepancies in a subscriber’s bill unless it has already been paid. So folks, get ready to play STC roulette! Step right up and punch your STC account number into the technology of your choice. Round and round the bits and bytes go and on what riyal figure they’ll stop, only STC knows. Once again STC’s subscribers are the losers in this game but we all keep playing and paying because there’s no choice.

It is totally ridiculous. Phone companies in other nations are now making subscribers’ bills available online. What I find extremely amusing is that STC demands that IT companies provide them with detailed accounting for all equipment and services delivered. Only after a complete justification is received will STC then consider paying the bill. Why is it that STC demands to see a comprehensive accounting of charges before they will pay them, but STC subscribers should rejoice that they have now been given the option to pay their phone bills sight unseen?

Continuing with the subject of communications, even though individuals still don’t have broadband data access through our landlines in the Kingdom, Inmarsat, the global mobile satellite communications company is making available a new solution that will bring high-speed data services to airline travelers. The Inmarsat Swift 64 platform allows Mobile ISDN or Mobile Packet Data connection to airliners by using the existing antenna on 80 percent of long-haul jets.

According to Samer Halawi, regional director, Inmarsat, the Swift 64 provides access at a rate that is up to 27 times faster than many PC data services available onboard airlines which are typically 2.4kibit/s. Swift 64 is an upgrade on Inmarsat’s previous service that is currently operational on Emirates Airlines, Qatar Airways, ALIA and many others. With the Swift 64, airlines will be able to provide fast e-mail and Internet access, video conferencing facilities and file transfer capability to passengers in-flight.

The company claims that their new system gives the scope for new applications to be tried and tested with minimum investment on the part of the airlines.

"The rationale behind Swift 64 is that it is an evolution not a revolution," explained Halawi. "It is a communications solution that brings to the region’s airline industry a competitive edge that leverages fast, reliable and cost effective communication needs."

There are certainly plenty of business travelers out there who will be delighted to give Swift 64 a try.

Now it’s time to switch to communications of a different sort. Everybody take five minutes and go check out www.petitiononline.com/warcrime and consider signing the petition addressed to Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, for the purpose of forming an international investigation committee on Ariel Sharon’s crimes against humanity. The petition is attracting serious interest in the international community. It currently has over 146,000 unique signatories. Arab News readers should be able to add 100,000 more. It is important to know that signing the petition requires a name and an e-mail address, potentially subject to verification. Consequently, no one can register again and again at will. But if each reader of this column registers himself or herself and then everybody gets another family member with an address through a free e-mail to register and after that we all work to convince a friend to register — we’ll have 100,000 more signatures added to the petition in no time at all.

It’s only a couple of days to the New Year and everybody is wondering what surprises are in store for the IT industry in 2002. Some IT professionals have provided their predictions for the region in the New Year. We’ll print a few today and more next week. It appears that how well an IT business will do depends largely on which segment of the industry it is in. Those companies offering software, solutions and services will most likely be better off than hardware vendors.

Steve Lockie, Managing Director, Tech Data: "We believe that the softer market we experienced in certain segments of the market is not over just yet. There are few signs of recovery across IT, but software and services continue to show reasonable growth. The IT business within the Middle East was not hurt as badly as in other geographies and as such the "recovery" will be less marked than elsewhere. Perhaps the real sign of recovery will be an increase in the important retail sector, which will only be possible if consumer confidence returns and there is stability within the regional infrastructure."

Thomas Mina, Regional Manager, Gulf, Kuwait & Lebanon, Network Associates: "Generally speaking, I think it will be downhill in a major way for the IT industry, at least till about the end of Q2 2002. Nevertheless, I personally feel that it is only certain IT companies which will notice this. Consumer products that we label as being a necessity, basically those items that we can’t do without such as antivirus software and operating systems, might not notice a downhill. But the procurement of IT equipment will fall in those areas where companies can afford to put off purchases till a later date."

Samer Halawi, Regional Director, Inmarsat: "There are opportunities in the region that are yet to be unveiled, especially in the area of telecommunications. With the region’s low landlines and mobile penetration, we expect next year to witness the emergence of satellite based communications, especially in areas where the infrastructure is costly and where satellites present both a business and economic development viable model for cost effective and efficient communications. This, along with greater transparency in the telecommunications regulations carried out in the region, present economic growth opportunities for governments and greater business efficiencies for end-users and service providers alike."

Marc Van der Ven, Regional Manager, ACCPAC International: "Despite the international slowdown, our business for 2001 has been great and we expect it to continue being so next year. Our experience in the market has shown us that the Middle East is unlikely to suffer next year because it is still going through an expansion phase in IT. Companies in the Middle East are growing in size, expanding in business, adopting technology and automating their business processes more than ever. This presents great opportunities to technology providers and ACCPAC has decided to take part in this by bringing its worldwide product portfolio and services to the Middle East, yet making it a point to customize its offering to suit the demands and needs of businesses in the region."

Thanks to everyone for their contributions today and please look forward to more next Sunday.

As it is hardware vendors who seem to be facing the most challenging environment coming into 2002, I had an in-depth conversation with Eric Tien, Managing Director, Acer Computer (M.E.) Ltd. Acer has a strong presence in the Gulf with its assembly plant in Jebel Ali Free Zone in the UAE. The company is attempting to expand throughout the region in a tightly focused manner, concentrating on the Enterprise sectors in countries which previously were only bit players in the IT target numbers of major multinationals. In that regard it recently signed up with a new channel partner in Oman, W.J. Towell Computer Services (WJTCS). Established in 1978, WJTCS was the first national IT company in Oman. It has a special relationship with the Omani Enterprise sector.

"Oman is a key market for Acer in the Gulf region," said Tien. "Acer has been supporting the Omani market with state-of-the-art-computing technologies for more than a decade. Our partnership with W.J. Towell Computer Services will bring more benefits, such as reliability, faster response and high-level services to our loyal IT users in Oman."

Acer enjoys strong market share in Oman, being the No. 2 brand overall in the PC segment and No. 1 in the home computing segment.

While the news from Oman may be bright, in other geographies Acer has had to struggle to hold market share and has watched sales slump globally.

What advice does Tien have for companies in the New Year? "Companies need to work toward surviving," said Tien. "This should be everyone’s theme right now. This will all be over sooner or later. The good times will come back. It is important for businesses to be alive when the good times come back. One should not expect tragedies like those of Sept. 11 to ever happen again. The global economy should start seeing recovery sometime during 2002 as the political atmosphere around the world becomes more harmonized."

In the United States, Tien thought that the cutbacks in IT spending would last until people’s confidence returned. Unfortunately, that would be subject to many different developments that no one could possibly predict. For the Middle East, Tien was certain that some companies would be likely to postpone IT spending. However, because Middle Eastern companies were already behind the curve in IT upgrades and modernization, canceling IT purchases was not an option if companies hoped to stay in business in the new Internet environment.

Acer has been restructuring for the last year. They have been more cautious in their operations in the United States and the Middle East since the Sept. 11 attacks. Senior management in Taiwan has requested that here in the Middle East, Acer focuses on sustainability over expansion.

"Everybody is looking at the bottom line over the top line nowadays," said Tien. "We are no exception. However, as Internet-driven developments continuously bring the quality of life upward, with time IT companies will be more important than ever before."