ALKHOBAR, 3 February — Last Thursday, Batelco, Bahrain’s telecom provider, announced that they’d signed their 300,000th cellular phone customer. Bahrain now has a cellular penetration rate of 46 percent of the total population. Their cellular service is superior in every way to ours in Saudi Arabia. Those of us in the Kingdom’s Eastern Region would like to respectfully request that we be allowed to abandon Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and instead recruit Batelco as our cellular provider.

While those of us in the Eastern Region are ditching the Kingdom’s telecom, perhaps we could be allowed to recruit a new national airline as well. Personally, I would vote for Emirates. I don’t think it would be a big problem for them to provide us with better service out of King Fahd International Airport than we are receiving from Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia).

Last Friday, I got a phone call in the early morning informing me that a close friend had been taken ill in Riyadh and had been admitted to a hospital there. Riyadh is only a short flight from Dammam and I urgently wanted to arrive there in time for the hospital’s visiting hours. How to get a flight reservation to Riyadh on a Friday?

All the travel agencies were closed. All Saudia’s offices were closed. I tried to call Saudia’s telephone reservations services, in Alkhobar, Riyadh and Jeddah, but I just got recorded messages stating that their services wouldn’t be available until 3 p.m. I tried to get through to information at KFIA but their number was constantly busy. In desperation I brought up Saudia’s website. I wasn’t greedy. I knew it was inconceivable that Saudia would have a facility to let me purchase a ticket online. But I hoped that at least I would find their current domestic flight schedule there. After all, there are many other national carriers that allow their customers to actually plan entire vacations online. Of course, a minimum service level online was too much to hope for from the Kingdom’s national carrier. Saudia’s website was useless. In desperation, I called the staff at a local hotel and convinced them to tell me Saudia’s flight schedule for Friday. How can this pass for service in the 21st century?

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Sheikha Lubna Al-Qasimi is on the road again. The managing director of Tejari, the business-to-business marketplace based in Dubai, is taking part in the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, which concludes tomorrow. Sheikha Lubna is participating in the “Women Leaders: The Next Generation,” panel in which she will relate her firsthand experiences in managing Tejari and Dubai’s e-government team as catalysts for furthering e-commerce development in the Arab world. She will also discuss the unique opportunities for business leadership that exist today for Arab women. The World Economic Forum organizers have also invited Sheikha Lubna to address issues surrounding “Women in the Muslim World.” During that presentation, she will work toward helping to provide a better understanding of the roles of women in Islamic countries. Tejari’s managing director plans to utilize the opportunity to rectify any misconceptions about the equality, opportunities and rights that women enjoy in Muslim countries.

“It is a great honor to share insight on the role of women both in business and the Islamic world with the more than 1,750 of the world’s top business, political, academic and media decisionmakers who participate in the WEF’s Annual Meeting. By participating on these panels, I hope to act as an ambassador for Arab women and present the real image of the business and personal opportunities we enjoy today,” commented Sheikha Lubna. “Taking part in this illustrious event also gives me an opportunity to help create a positive message about the innovations and developments currently taking place in the Middle East.”

Should I even ask why Saudi Arabia, as a country with a much larger presence in the region than the UAE, still has not nominated any of its women to work on initiatives similar to the ones being tackled by Sheikha Lubna?

In other news out from Dubai, more than 45 of the world’s leading banking and financial institutions will gather in Dubai for the UAE’s first International Islamic Finance Forum, to be held from March 17-19.

The first International Islamic Finance Forum — organized by the Institute for International Research (IIR), in association with iHilal Financial Services, Dow Jones Indexes, and the Saudi Economic Development Company (SEDCO) — will discuss important issues relevant to the Islamic investment industry both globally and locally.

“As they are competing with a monolithic, conventional banking industry, professionals in the Islamic financing arena must streamline procedures, develop innovative products, and maintain state-of-the-art technology to stay ahead and thrive,” said Ramzi Abu Khadra, CEO of iHilal Financial Services.

A panel of experts and scholars in the Islamic financial industry will exchange views on challenging topics in Islamic finance, including capital markets, equity funds, takaful, retail and commercial banking, regulatory frameworks, virtual finance, liquidity and risk security and private equity.

In addition, a special initiative in the forum will be the call for “New Voices” from all over the globe to participate in what they see as important new additions to the Islamic financial arena. Islamic finance research papers from students at all levels of study — undergraduate, masters, doctoral — are invited to be submitted to the selection committee. Please see ihilal.com for details. A $5,000 award, co-sponsored by iHilal Financial Services and First Islamic Investment Bank, will be presented at a gala dinner on March 17 to the author of the best paper.

Requested topics for competing research papers include:

— Marketing Islamic finance to Muslim demographics in Western nations.

— New or unique Islamic finance distribution methods in Western nations.

— Developing trade between Islamic countries.

— Issues and case studies on the development of Islamic capital markets around the world.

— Developing the Islamic venture capital and private equity industry.

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Now, let’s move onto a lighter subject. Feb. 14 is just around the corner and I’ve found the perfect gift for a sweetheart who’s mad about technology. At Lands’ End (landsend.com) they are offering a universal PDA case in bright red leather. It is gorgeous, affordable, can be delivered right to your sweetheart’s door at the click of a mouse — and it will last a whole bunch longer than flowers.

Lands’ End has also implemented a brilliant new technology at their award-winning website. Customers can build their own “body double” with a feature called “My Virtual Model.” Once a customer creates a body double, he or she can have it try on items of clothing from the Lands’ End catalogue and then see how they look from all sides. For the “fashion challenged,” the online service offers style advice based on a customer’s body type and will even suggest clothing combinations that will look great. With our lack of fitting rooms here in the Kingdom, it’s much easier to purchase clothes online using the virtual model and then have the items shipped in by post — rather than trekking back and forth to the mall three times.

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We finish this week’s column with a review of a newsletter sent to me by Microsoft EMEA. Now, first of all, let me clarify that this was actually sent to me by Microsoft using snail mail. It’s amusing that one of the most influential high-tech companies in the world would revert to a completely incompetent method of reaching people to discuss online security. But heck, maybe they were afraid that all our machines would be down due to a security vulnerability in our (or is it their) operating systems.

It’s about time Microsoft started getting serious on security. For years they’ve been using their customers as some sort of free Beta testing service. We find the security holes, then they patch them. Interestingly, they don’t consider their bug-ridden software defective. They actually have convinced millions of people that patches and upgrades are a desirable part of software ownership. I have always wondered if those same people would be as pleased with cars or clothes that were patched by the manufacturer after purchase?

In any case, let me tell you what the folks at MS have to say about security. They think it definitely should be a priority for government and industry. Microsoft also wants to shift as much of the responsibility as possible for online security to governments through the implementation of laws to fight online crimes.

In the newsletter, Bernard Vergnes, Chairman Emeritus, Microsoft EMEA wrote: “One of the most important steps governments can take to promote security on the Internet is to enact and vigorously enforce laws against online crimes. Many existing criminal laws, for example, were drafted to deal with offline acts. They don’t address equivalent acts performed online. Others aren’t up-to-date and don’t prohibit new crimes such as hacking and denial of service attacks. Where clear laws do exist in this area, authorities lack the resources or technical expertise to enforce them. In each of these cases, cybercriminals often go unpunished and the damage they do continues and can increase in scope. Meaningful Internet law reform — namely, harmonization of international cybercrime rules — along with greater allocation of resources and training for law enforcement personnel, are straightforward steps that governments can take to address cybercrime.”

I love reading such proposals because they are the stuff of fantasy, at least for the Kingdom. Even though basic anti-hacking laws were proposed in Riyadh more than a year ago, no new legislation in this area has been enacted. It’s pretty tough to expect a government to create cyber cops when they wouldn’t even have any laws to enforce.

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