Cyber Stone Age

Waiting, waiting, waiting...

Claims that we're a major international commercial centre, business friendly, a great place to set up a business fly in the face of the Cyber Stone Age internet we have to struggle with.

The speed is no better than the old dial-up I had back in Oz fifteen years or more ago. That's a lifetime in the cyberworld - think of the development over that period. But not here.

It comes into sharp focus when you get back from somewhere like Singapore.

Using the computer there last week I was connected to websites within a couple of seconds. Click and the new screen opens in a couple of seconds.

I come back to Dubai and I sit looking at a slowly, very slowly, loading screen. Thirty to sixty seconds is normal.

Bottom left corner is mocking me with "Connecting to http://..." then after more time "Waiting for http://..." then even more time "Start downloading from site http://..."

And they're the same websites which open instantly in Singapore.

There are regular complaints about the high prices we have to pay for internet access, but to me that's not the main problem. The main problem is the lack of speed
.
It's hugely wasteful of time, reduces productivity which means increased costs. How many hours are lost here, I wonder, by people just sitting waiting for the computer to move on so that they can get on with their work.

We're paying high prices for a terrible product. If they gave it to us free it would still be a poor product.

The Blackberry saga

Blackberries are big news.

Big news here and worldwide, because of the threatened ban on parts of the Blackberry service. I've just been listening to a piece about it on Sydney's ABC local radio station for example.

Most of what I've seen and heard in the international media seems to be just reporting the TRA's threatened action without comment. But the stories are attracting plenty of reaction and the internet's full of comment.

Two aspects of the comments are amusing me.

First is the shock that a government might want to eavesdrop on people's communications. Typical of a non-democratic dictatorship is the theme of many comments.

'Naive' doesn't begin to cover it.

I'm amazed at how many people are unaware that our communications are routinely monitored by governments, including the world's leading democracies. Never heard of Echelon?

The other amusing aspect to me is the claim that companies won't be able to operate if they can't use Blackberry - businesses are totally reliant on their BB, people are saying, and without it they can't carry on their business.

In reality only a small percentage of companies use the device; I wonder how they managed before it was introduced.

Of course, the same could apply to any new device - I wonder how companies were able to operate before e-mail, before fax, before telephones, before telegraph, before...

It reminds me of a situation back in Sydney when I worked for a hotel group.It was the bicentennial year, hotels were running full. Some regular card-carrying business guests were having trouble getting a room with us, so we suggested that the hotels ran a wait-list for regular guests who could then be allocated a room if a cancellation came in.

At a marketing meeting the reaction from a hotel was presented, that they couldn't create a wait-list because the (computer) system didn't have that function.

A colleague shook his head while he held up a pencil and writing pad.

VoIP - don't get too excited.

The TRA has announced an update on its VoIP policy, but I suggest we don't get too excited by it yet.

There's an immediate assumption that the cost of international calls will fall dramatically. For example, while EmBiz247 has good coverage it's under the headline: "New VoIP policy to shave call costs"

We can't assume that at all because charges are set by the operators, which have been named as Etisalat, Du and the satellite service providers Yahsat and Thuraya.

Although there may be slightly lower prices than we currently have I don't believe for one moment that they'll set prices down where providers like Skype have them for most of the world.

EmBiz247 in its information notes makes the point, correctly using the word 'may':

"There are many factors to be taken into consideration in determining the cost of long-distance rates. In addition, international VoIP calls may take place in a variety of scenarios, which will also influence the cost. There may be scenarios where international calls using VoIP Services may be more economical than current rates."

There's also the inevitable bureaucracy complicating the whole thing. The sort of red tape and jargon that causes confusion and creates unnecessary problems when new services are introduced.

And they're really talking about the technicalities rather than cost savings for companies and individuals.

For example Gulf News says: "Etisalat was quick to announce the details of its new VoIP solution for enterprise users" while Etisalat continues to talk in jargon rather than English with its statement: "...there is a significant opportunity for businesses to leverage the advantages of an integrated network and the convergence of voice and data through a VoIP solution."

Oh good, it's a solution.

And the TRA says: "The real attraction of VoIP lies in the fact that it enables true integrated services, location independent, with always-on capability and great flexibility."

I don't see anyone talking about reduced charges.

I haven't yet got my head around what we'll be getting or who will have access to it.

Here's the TRA again: "Closed groups or companies can make calls to their branches within the UAE as per the new policy and academic institutions for research purposes can utilise VoIP to contact international counterparts. This all has to be done within the framework provided by the licensee."

I'm going to wait for the clarifications and the clarifications of the clarifications.



EmBiz247 has the story here.

VoIP. Don't get too excited

Recently the TRA and now our two ISPs have said we'll be getting VoIP international services before too long.

From conversations and media reports over the past few years it seems to me that most people are assuming we'll be getting very cheap international calls, like those offered by the banned Skype and others.

The reality is that the cost of using VoIP is decided by the provider.

I'll be very surprised if Etisalat and du offer anything like the cheap rates charged by Skype, MyWebCalls and the others.




Gulf News has the latest here.

News from the parallel universe

Today there's another example of people living in a parallel universe which I post about every so often.

We live here but there's another parallel universe populated by people such as bureaucrats and company spokesmen.

As mobile phone owners we all get spam don't we?

There's a report in Gulf News about the ludicrous levels it's reaching.

Mobile subscribers and marketing executives say that while the rise of SMS marketing is a cause of subscriber frustration, the boiling point is often reached when a glitch in the system causes one subscriber to receive the same message up to 200 times.

Most of those complaining about spam messages have been etisalat subscribers.

So the spammers have Etisalt's subscriber base, right?

Lebanon-based marketing company El Barid has a database of 1.25 million etisalat subscribers, according to International Sales Manager Alain Haddad.

Confirmed.

But that's only in the real world. If you live in the parallel universe:

An etisalat spokesperson rejected the allegation that the company's databases have been leaked, calling them "highly inaccurate and baseless".

"etisalat's database is not accessible, sold or shared with any third party, for any reason whatsoever. etisalat maintains that its customer database is confidential and only limited concerned staff from the organisation are authorised to maintain it," he said.



The story is here.

New No Entry sign

It may be old news to you but I've been away and came across it for the first time this morning...



(All perfectly innocent surfing by the way, I just wanted to check whether Secret Dubai was still blocked.)

I've been cut off

A couple of days with no internet connection so I've been feeling isolated.

Suddenly on Friday the connection dropped out. Etisalat told me to do all the usual stuff of turning everything off, switching it back on, I tried hitting the box...nothing worked.

OK, they'll send an engineer on Sunday.

This morning at 8.30 an engineer called to say he could be here in half an hour but would I check the connection first.

I checked and all the lights which should have been glowing were glowing, I switched on and the connection is back working.

According to the engineer there was a problem at Etisalat - I don't know what he meant exactly but he said they had "changed over" so I assume plenty of other people have had the same problem.

Service from Etisalat

I complain about Etisalat from time to time, with good reason, so I should also record when something is done well.

Yesterday evening I suddenly lost my connection - couldn't get to the 'net or e-mail.

So I called the help line.

First good point, I got through, it wasn't engaged.

The usual thing of a machine telling me which numbers to press to finally get to a human being.

A short wait, no more than a couple of minutes, because all the staff were 'busy helping other customers' and then I was talking to a helpful person.

He didn't jabber on in meaningless jargon, but quickly and efficiently ran me through the steps to take. That lead him to discover that the problem was somewhere at their end, they'd cut my connection somehow. (I expect someone tripped over a wire and pulled the plug out).

He said he'd get the engineers working on it and I should have my connection back within two hours.

In fact it was less than one hour.

The only part of the exercise I wasn't totally happy with was the call from the engineer to make sure I had the connection back.

That was at 6.30 this morning, just a tad early I thought.

The oxymoron of customer service

There's a nice 'what the customers say vs what the company says' in Gulf News today which sums up customer service Dubai style.

I've described it before as: we give them our money and they decide whether to give us anything in return, what and when it will be. We must not complain and they don't need to apologise or explain.

In the two items Etisalat customers say:

A banker was recently kept on hold 20 minutes before the customer support representative picked up her call, not knowing that the number she had called was not a toll-free one.

Upon discovering how much she was charged for the call, she demanded to be compensated for the lost credit. "Why should I be paying to wait for them?"

She was told that the matter would be looked into but said she never received a response.

A subscriber of the company's Al Shamil DSL service called technical support at 4am and was told after a half-an-hour wait that the person responsible had left the office for the night.

An Al Shamil subscriber had an intermittent connection for five days, had lodged a complaint "many times" but received no response.

"I called them with a complaint and was given a reference number and told that a technician would call me. I never received the call so I called Etisalat back and was told that my complaint had never been registered," he said, adding that he waited for two more days but no technician called.

Another says: "For a whole year, I had an intermittent DSL connection. Every time I called Etisalat I was told that my complaint has been filed and I should expect a call and a visit from a technician soon. The technician came a year later after a number of calls and a demand for compensation," he said.

Yet another says: when he had difficulty accessing the internet Etisalat said a technician would call within a week. "It's been more than ten days now."

Etisalat says:

On average, the waiting time for internet customers is between 2 and 3 minutes.

Etisalat has provided alternate methods of getting in touch with its customer service staff which can be utilised during peak times.

Recent improvements in customer support levels have been acknowledged by customers "in writing".


And for all of us who think we've been struggling with unbelievably slow or intermittent service over the last few days - we're wrong.

Etisalat says:

There is no general outage in internet connections in any part of the UAE

There have been no "major issues apart from individual cases".

Khalifa Al Shamsi, Vice-President Marketing, said that the network had been performing very well.

So will you all please stop complaining, pay your outrageous perfectly reasonable bills every month and leave Etisalat in peace so they can continue to provide us with their marvellous service.


The stories are here and here.

Anyone else?

Network Error (tcp_error)

A communication error occurred: "Operation timed out"
The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests. You may wish to try again at a later time.

For assistance, contact Customer Support.


Since yesterday I've been getting this with most of my googling. And Yahooing.

It's more than a little frustrating when you're trying to find information.

Is it just me or is it an Etisalat problem?

Good service from Etisalat

Now that's something I never imagined I'd be saying.

Here's the story: we decided to change to Wi-Fi at home, so yesterday morning went into Etisalat at Jebel Ali.

The guy at reception was knowledgeable and helpful, we filled in a couple of items such as 'User Name' on a form, he gave us a numbered ticket.

Less than a minute later our number was called, again the person we saw was knowledgeable and helpful - and very pleasant - and it took him a couple of minutes to enter information into the computer.

The whole process took less than five minutes.

That was yesterday. This morning at seven the phone rang. The engineer would be with us in fifteen minutes to instal the new modem, if that was OK.

It was.

Even more amazing, he knew his way to our building and didn't need any instructions.

Fifteen minutes later he was doing the job, fifteen minutes after that he'd finished.

I thought it was worth recording.

How to obstruct Dubai's commercial life.

OUTLOOK EXPRESS

Some errors occurred while processing the requested tasks.

* Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection. Possible causes for this are server problems, network problems blah blah blah...

The last few days I've had this message on my e-mail more often than I've been able to use it.

It simply won't connect.

I keep trying, it flickers on for a few minutes, I send a couple of messages...then up comes the terminated message again.

Add to that the current unblievably slow speed of the internet connection, which is even worse than the normal slow speed, and you have Etisalat's contribution to the succes of Dubai as an international business hub. Thousands of people sitting in offices glumly staring at computer screens that load at an agonising, frustrating snail's pace. People forced to waste time, to be unproductive.

This is the 21st Century, international commerce is increasingly done via the internet. Dubai's very future depends on us being a major international business hub, with an increasing amount of business done from here, with more and more international companies relocating or opening regional offices here. Communication is the lifeblood of business. But Etisalat's infrastructure isn't up to the job. Dubai's businesses must have modern telecommunications services, with sufficient capacity, fast and reliable.

Etisalat's website assures me:

We enable people to reach each other, businesses to find new markets and everyone to fulfil their potential. Across the UAE, we provide telephone, TV and Internet services for everyone, and much more for businesses. We are increasingly present in international markets. Our customers enjoy the latest services and technologies, as well as a choice of great entertainment.

Our website will let you discover all we have to offer.

Reach out. The world’s waiting.

I'm trying to, but you won't let me!!!

Bloody computers!

Not that anyone else will be interested, but it helps to get it off my chest.

We were having big, big computer problems, too many and too complicated to go into. Spend a lot of time checking for viruses and other nasties. All the protective & diagnostic systems say there's no problem.

Oh yes there is.

The usual waiting on hold for an hour while Etisalat's technical help people were "dealing with other customers". Nevertheless "your call is important to us"... obviously not important enough for them to employ enough people to deal with the calls though.

Eventually get a person on the line, who eventually gives the diagnosis that "it must be a problem with your computer".

Great.

Debate whether to call 'experts' in to find and fix the problem. Well, debate for a couple of seconds and dismiss the idea as very stupid. From experience I have less than no faith in the ability of computer/IT 'experts' to even begin to understand what they're doing. At great expense to the customer.

The alternative seems quicker, better, more cost-effective. Bin the bloody thing and buy a new one.

Decision made.

Buy a new one, the brain that is, and are surprised to find it comes with new keyboard, new webcam, new headset, new speakers. Nothing wrong with the existing ones but it's always nice to have new toys.

Mrs Seabee is much more technically-minded than me, and has much more patience - I think machines should simply work as they're supposed to, do what I bought them to do, at all times. I don't have any desire or interest in how they work or in the technical stuff. I lose interest in less than a minute to be honest.

Mrs Seabee starts to install the various bits & pieces. Sits for hours while little arrows fly into little bins, or little green lines gradually fill an empty panel. At the end of it messages along the lines of "The installation was unsuccessful" appeared with monotonous regularity.

Although we were assured every 30 seconds or so that our call "is important to us", waited for a long, long time while the tech. people were "dealing with other customers".

That happened half a dozen times through the evening, but each time the tech. people - when they eventually took the call - talked a patient Mrs Seabee through it, with far too much trial and error to change my opinion of 'experts', and she eventually got the basic stuff loaded.

We now have internet connection, e-mail, Messenger. Norton and other protection is in place. Still a lot to do, a lot to install, a lot of fine-tuning to go through but at least I have the basics to play with.

Mind you, there seem to be a lot of nasties about. Since 3.10 this afternoon, and it's now 6.25, Norton has told me it's blocked high-risk attacks 39 times.

I have MSRPC SrvSvc NetApi Buffer overflow (2), NetBios MspnPQueryResConflist BO, MS RPC Malicious LSASS DS Request BO (1) and MS ASNI something-or-other all trying to get into my computer every few minutes.

I'm going to shut down now and hope they've gone away by the time I come back to it.

Businesses hit again.

The future of Dubai relies on it being an international commercial hub, a centre for businesses to set up in and operate from. Oil will run out very soon, is already only a small part of the emirate's GDP and the plan is for business to develop and prosper to create an expanding economy.

For the objective to become a reality the emirate has to be commercially competitive. Viable alternative locations abound - in the Gulf, for example, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

Going against the plan and vision for the future of the country, the Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA) has announced that VoIP will be banned in the commercial free zones. It currently is available there but not in the rest of the country.

That's yet another added cost of doing business in Dubai, added unnecessarily. Doing business internationally means making lots of international phone calls. As from next month, free zone businesses will have to pay high phone call costs.

Keeping costs under control is a vital part of a successful business. I was already hearing from business owners that they were thinking of moving operations to cheaper locations. Now the TRA has come up with another backward step.

Compete in the modern business world? Not with this kind of retrograde attitude.


Gulf News report is here

I give up!

That's it! I'm going to shut the computer down now. Not only is it the slowest I can ever remember, bloody Etisalat is spamming my e-mail box:


Al Shamil Quiz Competition

Dear Valued Al Shamil Customer,

As part of our constant endeavors to enhance customers Internet experience and enforce awareness of broadband Internet, we are pleased to announce Al Shamil Broadband Quiz Competition for kids during Knowledge Surprises, in partnership with the Land Department, between 3rd and 9th of August 2006.

By the way, don't you love the "...enforce awareness..." Oops, a Freudian slip.

Slow? Almost motionless.

Are they, without the promised warning, moving the cables because of Fujairah's Big Banana Island today?

I can't believe how slow my computer is.

Etisalat: all problems solved.

No more complaints about Etisalat please, they’ve fixed the problems.
It took them three decades, but they’ve discovered what the problem was – they had the wrong logo!



And we’re not just being honoured with the new logo – according to the press release printed word-for-word in Gulf News (you can always tell, the by-line for press release is ‘Staff Report’) they have launched “a new customer-centric identity.” Don’t you just love that – “customer-centric.”

The press release goes on to assure us that “…our new identity strengthens our commitment towards achieving new levels of excellence in services offered to our valued customers.”

And I especially liked “The new identity reflects Etisalat's values of transparency, optimism, openness, simplicity and reliability.”

AAAGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now they won't even let me go to the UAE Community Blog! Are we all banned? What did we do? Who did we upset?

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.

I AM SICK AND TIRED OF NOT BEING ABLE TO ACCESS GOOGLE!

FOR GOD'S SAKE, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY. WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO USE 21st CENTURY TECHNOLOGY!

Big Brother Is Watching You.

George Orwell was pretty much spot-on with his predictions. CCTV cameras everywhere, Echelon, (the US National Security Agency's global spy system which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax, email and telex message sent anywhere in the world) and now our friendly local ISP has announced a new policy of checking on Internet Cafe users.
In Dubai I bet they'll want the usual paperwork - passport plus two photocopies of the relevant pages, three passport photos, driving licence, e-card, health card, a deposit of Dh10,000 returnable if you can prove you're not guilty.
Gulf News, who don't claim to be our favourite English daily, have the story:


Internet cafes to keep records of customers

By Daniel Bardsley, Staff Reporter

Dubai: Etisalat has said a new policy of recording the names of all internet cafe users will not extend to keeping track of every web page surfers log on to.
In a few weeks' time, all internet cafes in the UAE will be keeping records of people who use the internet.
Internet surfers will have to show photographic identification before they can use the internet and details of when they logged in and logged out will be kept.
Abdullah Hashim, Senior Manager for Etisalat's internet arm eCompany, said the policy was being introduced in response to a request from the authorities.
Hashim added that most illegal internet activity was done at internet cafes rather than on home computers so it was important to know who was using these.
"The internet cafe is where people go if they want to do bad things like hacking or sending threatening e-mails. All over the world, most cyber crime is done from public places.
"If we discover that a certain mail was generated from this internet cafe, we'll be able to find which people came and used it at that time. Then the authorities will investigate it.
"It will help them and give them a lead but it won't necessarily solve it immediately. We cannot have a record of every web page people look at. It's just to know who was there.
"There is a degree of control in knowing that this person was at this internet cafe at this time," he said. He said some internet cafes have already begun asking for identification and the system is gradually being rolled out to the remaining venues. In total there are nearly 600 internet cafes in the UAE.
The new rule has echoes of the situation in the mid- 1990s when some of the first internet cafes in Dubai used to ask customers for their names. "It is a gradual implementation as we have to do some technical changes to identify each internet cafe. It should be completed in one or two months' time from now," he said.
Hashim said adults will have to show one form of photo identification, such as a labour card, passport or driving licence, before they are given a username and password that will let them use the internet. Customers aged under 16 will be asked for their name.
He added: "This policy is to protect the country but we want to strike a balance so we don't prevent people from enjoying the internet."

I do like the last bit. About Etisalat not wanting to prevent people from enjoying the internet.