I read last Thursday in local newspapers that Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat) would forward an application for initial qualification for a permit to provide mobile telephone services in the Kingdom. The sector was recently opened for investment and Etisalat formed a consortium with Saudi investors to meet the criteria set by the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology. There is no doubt of the importance of this step as chattering remains one of our society’s favorite pastimes.
We in the Kingdom are a nation of consumers except when it comes to chattering when we are both innovative and pioneering. This claim is supported by the fact that the revenues of the Saudi Telecom Company (STC) in 2003 reached a record SR28 billion. This amount equals the combined budgets of five Arab countries. This gives an indication of how much chattering goes on in our society though telephone conversations, in truth, form only a part of the whole.
Though the telephones of students, children and drivers eat up some one-quarter of the family budget, the real concern is that the most valuable thing of all — time — is wasted in pointless chatter. A recent poll conducted by a newspaper of 73 girls between 16 and 30 showed that a majority of 55 percent spend their time contacting their friends by telephone, through mobile messages or by paying visits. This simply means that an important group of society spends most of the time in a useless industry called “talk”, and this most probably results in family problems and in the destruction of marriages.
The chattering phenomenon also has an emotional factor, mostly attributed to the fact that we were originally pastoral and agricultural societies in which the family and tribe formed the base of the social structure. Thus it is not strange if the art of conversation comes at the top of our daily lives and is linked to our mental outlook as well as our emotions.
If you are worried about time, then you need to ask yourself these questions: How many of your relatives do you avoid calling because they are talkative? How many do you avoid meeting because they not only waste their time but they waste that of other people? Would you like to guess how much time is wasted in government departments, schools and companies and on every production site? Without looking at the stock market indices, you are advised to put your money into telecommunications companies as the chattering industry is a booming one in our society.
