ADVENTURES IN DUBAI: YOUR FAVOURITE NUMBER ONE BLOG BRITISH DESIGNER LIVING IN DUBAI TELLS (NEARLY) ALL
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Blue Screen of Censorship for TECOM
The papers today are awash with stories related to telecoms: Emirates Toady headlines with a story about rumours of a third entrant into the retail market in the UAE. TRA denies all knowledge.
Gulf Snooze carries a couple of stories, one that says conventional telecoms companies need to embrace VOIP or die (I paraphrase). The other brings us the good news that du (the new telco, soon to start mobile operations) will be connecting TECOM to the proxy any day now and therefore that Media City's tagline 'Freedom to Create' becomes even more meaningless than it has been up till now. Interesting to note that du, the monopoly-breaker, will still have a monopoly within TECOM, Emaar and Nakheel properties. Du is 20% owned by TECOM Investments, who about a year ago took over SahmNet, Emaar's own telco. As TECOM is wholly-owned by Dubai Holdings (who also own propery developer Nakheel), they are given preference in supplying telecoms infrastructure to all new Nakheel developments.
Of course, it is not fresh news that the Broxy will be imposed on TECOM (collectively Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City and Knowledge Vamlet). But what is interesting is the disingenuous tosh used to justify it. Gulf News says:
Asked why users were not free to choose what sites they visit, Mohammad Al Ghanem, director general of the TRA, said the TRA was not out to "police" the citizenry of the UAE.
"We are not inventing a procedure or a process," he told Gulf News. "This is implemented in every single country but with different limits and different categorisations."
Mr Al Ghanem, that is not an answer...
Al Ghanem said the TRA desired to avoid any negative impacts on businesses residing within the free zones, and promised exemptions for companies with a legitimate interest in keeping unfettered internet access.
Breaking with the commonly perceived notion that the free zones had their own sets of telecommunications laws, [Mohammad Al Gaith, the TRA's manager for technical affairs] said the reason the free zones weren't previously covered under the filter was technical, not jurisdictional.
New telecom operator du provides Internet service in the free zones, and problems had arisen over implementing the proxy filter over du's network.
Mr Al Ghaith, I have been a tenant at Dubai Media City since shortly after its inception 6 years ago. I can tell you that the reason these free zones were not previously proxied was neither technical nor jurisdictional. It was a deliberate decision by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum who, in his wisdom, realised that these entities would not be very attractive to potential international clients if their Internet access was censored. That reason is still valid today
Can somebody please explain to me why the Telecoms Regulation Authority thinks it is fit to tell me, or any other Internet user, what sites we can and cannot visit? I know there is a cultural thing with the locals and some others, but surely if they want a restricted Internet then they can request and be given that. For everyone else, we pay more than twice as much for Internet access than anywhere else in the real world, and I think you, the TRA, should respect that and let us have (more or less) unfettered access.
I am sick to death of being treated like a child by these people. Apart from anything else, their obsessive, frequently unreasonable, often illogical blocking of millions of websites, including some of the world's most popular (Flickr again) makes me cringe with embarrassment. We are supposed to be the most free of all Gulf States, but we block Flickr because some wastafarian tells us to.
I despair. And my FTP and HTTPS are still not working.
OK, Keefieboy, try to be calm. Don't bash those keys too hard, you'll be needing them when you leave this wonderful country. Deep breath .................. innn....................... outttt ...................innn ....................... outtt.
OK. I'm calm. I'm CALM!!!
For the last week I have been having a problem with my Etisalat Al-Shamil ('broadband') connection from my mansion. The problem is that I can no longer use FTP. You don't want to know this, but FTP is File Transfer Protocol - a thing that allows you to upload and download files to and from web servers. It's pretty essential if you design websites like what I do. The problem is that I can connect to various servers, but once connected I cannot change folders or upload/download files. Why? Well, some of my research on the web suggested this was symptomatic of a firewall problem. Somewhere in the chain of computers between my labtob and the web server, a little pox is saying 'computer says no'.
So, with the greatest reluctance, I called the Itisalot Call Center in Ajmaaaaan. I say reluctance because many years of experience have taught me that they have a very limited range of responses available to them, namely: 1) 'Your computer is misconfigured, please format your hard drive.' or 2) 'There is something wrong with your server.'
So we go through that and then I request a phone number for someone who actually knows something about the Itisalot Interweb network. No can do, says the boy on the phone: 'send an email to mailto:help@itisalot.ae. Yeah, right. So I did.
To my absolute and utter amazement I got a phone call from someone who sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Admittedly he did go through the usual 'it's not our fault' routine, but I feel like we are making progress of a kind. But not fast enough.
In the intervening days I've provided this guy with Traceroutes of my connection attempts to various servers in the UK and US. I have suggested to him that it may be a firewall problem. I have told him that I can successfully use FTP from my office in Media City, so configuration of my laptop and of the servers concerned is absolutely ruled out. So now we are at a stage where they are on the verge of admitting that they have a problem, and he's trying to get a meeting together with various departments to sort it out.
Bravo!
The other day I realised that we (BetterArf and moi) have a related problem, and we've had this one for quite a while. We cannot easily access 'https://' domains from our house. This means that e-commerce transactions almost always fail, it takes forever for me to use Red Triangles' online banking, and BetterArf cannot access her work email from here.
So, enough of the Sherlock Holmes. I just thought I'd try something. Forget about Etisalat's restrictive and ill-configured infrastructure, I'll try my own. I have servers in the UK. I set up a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to one of them. This means that anything I send or receive comes straight from that server without any of the intervening Itisalot stuff getting in the way.
Bingo!
FTP worked straight off! And much faster than it's ever worked through the Broxy. But, the Interweb fell over. So it helps if I need to do an emergency out-of-hours upload, but not if I want to visit my bank or playboy.com.
Itisalot (sorry, Etisalat, you might not recognise our little jokey name for you), I hope you read and understand this post. It tells you two things
1) The Proxy screws everything up and everyone with more than half a brain hates it and
2) Stop your Call Center staff from always assuming that the problem is at the customer's end. Because more often than not, it isn't.
Our belovéd Telecoms Regulation Authority has just announced that we have until December to sort out our mobile phone books. Currently, all mobile numbers in the UAE have the prefix '050'. If you are calling a mobile number from another local mobile, you can drop the prefix. But from December, that prefix must be dialled. Partly this is because Itisalot is running out of capacity on 050, and they are going to introduce 056 if they get any new subscribers. And of course, du will need a prefix of its own.
I met somebody who works for du the other day. The conversation went something like this: du guy: Hi, my name is zzz and I work for du, and that's all I'm going to say about that. me: So I'm hearing that du could use another year or two before they launch? du guy: zzzzip. me: ?? du guy:
Hmm. I actually sent an email to du at the end of September, explaining that I had been under the impression they would launch by the end of September and wondering what was actually happening. Sadly I have not had a reply yet. Neither has 7Days, who were getting themselves into a bit of a strop about it a while ago. Anyhoo, the current zeitgeist says they'll get something on the market by the end of this year. But really they'll need two or three years to get their act together. I'm disappointed by the current radio silence: they started off well, but have been completely absent recently. This does not inspire confidence.
No doubt you lucky lucky beoble who live in the UAE and are hostages of Etisalat will have been invited to do their annual 'Hostage Satisfaction Survey'. And you've probably thought 'I can't be bothered - the questions are always phrased so that whatever you say makes it look like you actually like Etisalat'. That's what I thought, but then I had a look at it and I have to say it's better than previous years; your options are no longer limited to a range of 'quite good' through to 'excellent', they now have a ten-point scale that goes from 'terrible' to 'outstanding' or words to that effect. And there are free-text boxes dotted around where you can write an essay telling them how great or how crap you think they are.
I was a bit stumped on the satisfaction rating for the proxy though: the question is 'How IMPORTANT the following network and other related aspects for an Internet service are to you?...Internet Filtering/ Content Blocking (feature by which the ISP blocks certain websites)' and the answer options go from 'not important at all' to 'extremely important' - it's very hard to answer that when what you want to say is '99% of censorship is immoral and a contravention of basic human rights so please go burn your damned proxy'.
And it was interesting to see a number of questions asking about the possibility that you may be thinking of switching to an alternative supplier.
Etisalat - this survey is a brave but hopelessly belated attempt at pretending that you give a damn what your hostages think. But you already know that you've lost the vast majority of your hostage base even before the new operator starts operations. You have acted as smug and callous monopolists for as long as I have lived in this country. You have bled us dry.
I went to perform my patriotic duty this morning by paying my monthly visit to the gatherer of taxes.
I went to pay my phone and Internet bills this morning. I was expecting great things of Etisalat, seeing as how just last week they won an award for Best Customer Service in the UAE. And it's Ramadan, so everyone should be super-nice.
There was a small huddle around one of the cash payment machines, but the other had no queue. I fiddled around with it for a bit, and soon discovered the reason for its queuelessness. It wasn't working. So I joined the huddle for the other machine, which had grown a little bit (the huddle, not the machine). I stood in the queue for ten minutes, during which time the person at the front looked like he was about halfway through the sheaf of bills he was inputting.
So I stomped off to the cashier's desk and was about fifth in line. The cashier finished with the person he was dealing with, and turned the next one away because she had fewer than six bills. Buggrit! I left that queue and rejoined the cash machine queue, which by now was simply enormous. I must have had steam coming out of my ears because a security guard came up to me and suggested I use the other other machine. It's outside, round the back of the building, in a little lobby. Great. I get there. It's outside, round the back of the building, in a little lobby, in pieces.
Back to the main building. I noticed that the cashier had no customers now, so I approached him with my feeble list of three accounts. 'Cash machine' he said. I pointed out that a) only one out of the three machines was working, and b) he was doing nothing. 'Go see manager' he said.
I went to see the manager, pointed out that he had a problem, and wondered if Etisalat didn't want my money. 'Of course we want your money!' he said, so I suggested he might want to find a way to make it possible for me to give it to them. He had a quick look at the mess in the main hall and told Abdullah to be a cashier for a bit.
Abdullah donned a cashier's hat and did the business. He had no change, of course, so I ended up giving Etisalat a bit more than I wanted to.
My thanks to Grapeshisha for posting an English translation of the UAE's new cyber crimes law. I hope and pray that it is a bad translation, because it talks about issues that are very far removed from 'cyber crime'. Anyhoo, I quite like this clause...
Article No.5 of the law reads anyone convicted of hampering, blocking or preventing the reach of service or logging onto computer programmes, or information sources with any possible means whether via the use of internet or any information technology mean, shall be punished with a jail term, or a fine, or both.
So it's nearly the end of the month and of course I haven't bothered to pay Etisalat so the barftuds cut me off. So I trundle down to their shiny new office at Jebel Ali and get pounced upon by an over-eager East European lady. She won't let me go to the cashier, and forces me to use the cash payment machine. Observing my age she assumes I'm a techno-moron and insists on standing beside me and telling me which buttons to press.
Now, I've used these machines before, and they are very clever, but a pain in the butt when you have four accounts to deal with. This particular machine has seen better days: the screen has very low contrast, and it is positioned so that it reflects the main entrance doors and the bright sunny scene outside. I can barely see anything on the screen.
What I usually do with these machines if I'm paying several bills is to treat each one as a separate transaction. But I learned something today. If you press the button marked 'Select To Query', you can do multiple accounts! I point out to my companion that the phrase 'select to query' has no meaning in the English language - I certainly would not guess that it is supposed to mean anything like 'do another account'.
Anyhoo, we finally get to the screen where you decide how much you actually want to pay, I make a complete mess of it and then accidentally cancel everything. This debacle has taken almost ten minutes. I beg the woman to let me go to the cashier and she relents.
The cashier at his nice ergonomically designed workstation only has to tap in one of my phone numbers to get all of my accounts on his screen, decide the amounts, take the money and print receipts. Two minutes maximum.
Due to shortage of time I decline to give Etisalat the benefit of my wisdom as I pass the box marked 'Etisalat, are we any good?' on the way out.
Well, I can't say I wasn't warned. I had an email from Etisalat a few days ago advising me that Internet speeds 'might' be reduced for a week starting today. And the reason? None of the one's I'd previously guessed at. But it is a corker.
They are relocating three submarine cables that come ashore at Fujeirah because of the construction of an artificial island off the coast. Gulf News quotes Abdullah Hashim, Ecompany's Assistant General Manager as saying that they had put in extra links to minimize the disruption caused by the work.
"People might not even notice any difference. We will try to manage the traffic. Many operators would not do this work to lessen the effects, but customer service is very important to us," he said.
I'm noticing it now, and have been for about the last hour.
My thanks go to an anonymous reader for emailing me a heads-up about my previous post. It was displaying just fine on this main page, but if you tried to view it on its own, in the archive or to add a comment, it was blocked! I never thought I'd see the day. This article was only posted a few hours ago, and the supposition is that the combination of a synonym for 'no-cost' and a synonym for 'extremely warm' were to blame.
May I take this opportunity to extend my most humble apologies to Etisalat and, indeed, to the brave and noble population of the UAE for having offended their religious, cultural, political and moral values. And it only took two innocent little words to do it!
So I removed the offending words from the post, and instantly the page is available again. Which means that Etisalat have an extremely crude set of filters that look for banned words in page titles. Think I'll try a few experiments...
...a bit later. Right then, if your page title contains the phrase 'free hot', it triggers the 'site blocked' page. How chuffing pathetic is that?
Etisalat's Summer Slowdown seems to be with us once again. For the past week, possibly longer, their ADSL 'service' has been crawling along like a slow crawly thing. I've been scanning the papers for news of storms in the Indian Ocean causing not one, but two ships to sink and snap their subsea cables. To no avail.
Mind you, they probably wouldn't use that excuse again. No doubt their PR Officer/Tea Boy is scratching his head trying to come up with something more plausible - hence the delay in any kind of announcement / non-apology.
I know! 'It's the Atlanteans. Not dead, just resting. Recently awoken and roaming the sea-bed ripping up fibre-optic cables'.
Or: 'Underwater Tsunami Snaps Cables'. Or: 'Alien Spacecraft Crashes Into Indian Ocean: Cables Snapped'. Or: 'You Whingeing Expats Are All Going On Vacation: Why Should We Pay For Bandwidth That Won't Be Used?'
Hard on the heels of the launch of Etisalat's feeble Two Cabbage Leaves logo, I had occassion to visit their Jebel Ali shop. As the end of the month approached I thought I should give them a huge amount of money to pay for services rendered, 'cos, you know, they need it much more than I do, poor things. So I headed off to the nearest cash payment machine which quite happily accepted money for mobile and landline, but really was not interested in my broadband account. It refused to recognise the account number, even though it has done so in the past.
So I jump in the car and head off to the wilds of Jebel Ali. On entering the hallowed portals of Etisalat I was accosted by one of three young ladies in smart black uniforms.
Young lady: Hello Me: Grunt (thinking: get out of my way) Young lady: Are here to pay bills? Me: Grunt Young lady: Are you paying by cash or credit card? Me: Cash Young lady: Do you have more than five bills? Me: No (thinking: get the &%$^ out of my way) Young lady: Then you can use our shiny new Cash Payment Machine! Me: Can't Young lady: Sure you can, and look! There's no queue! Me: Doesn't work Young lady: Of course it does. It's very easy. I'll show you how to do it 'cos your obviously a bit thick Me: Please get out of my way
Head off to cash counter. Wait ten minutes. Pay money.
I'm sorry, but if you're trying to do customer service you should not block the way of people in a hurry and subject them to a five minute grilling. What a relief to hit the cash counters and find that nothing at all has changed: the indolent old staff still wearing their their own old clothes (competition idea: design a uniform for Etisalat staff, and no, dishdashas are not allowed), still grumpy and grunting, still think that customers are like criminals.
Compare and contrast: Etisalat's new way of describing themselves...
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.
And the reality.
We're only a phone company and ISP, but we behave like a totalitarian dictator. We charge enormous fees for our services. We only give you half the Internet and criminalise access to the other half. We lie to you when things go wrong. We really do think you are stupid. We will never let you use VOIP until we can find a way to make you pay at least as much as you are paying now. So just give in and give us more money.
The BlackBerry has finally arrived in the Middle East. Research In Motion (RIM), the inventors of the BlackBerry (notwithstanding several patent infringement lawsuits) have teamed up with The Lovely Etisalat (TLE) to make it all happen.
BlackBerry service is initially being aimed at the corporate market, with prices to match. The handsets cost Dhs 2,500 - 3,000: fair enough, it is a SmartPhone. But there's a setup fee, a whopping Dhs 22,000! And then there's a monthly usage charge of Dhs 175 for 'always-on' UAE connection and Dhs 295 for international roaming. Oh, and don't forget additional charges for making phone calls.
Looks like TLE is making the most of its monopoly while it can, bless 'em.
I wasted a bit of time a few days ago doing an Etisalat survey. They are investigating the demand for faster broadband speeds - 4, 6 & 8 Megabippies are talked about. They ask how much I would be prepared to pay for this. Also what kind of 'gift' would I require as an incentive to upgrade - options range from a biro to a colour laser printer.
Ridiculous, and of course they don't give you any opportunity to vent your spleen about the existing shite service, whose speed never ever gets close to what it's supposed to be. Anyway, if they follow my suggestion, I'll soon be enjoying an 8 Megabippy connection for ten dirhams a month and driving around in a brand new Land Cruiser. I deserve it don't I (I've certainly nearly bloody paid for it over the last twelve years).
On a happier note, I was compelled to visit Etisalat yesterday because the barftuds had disconned my Interweb thingy. Amazingly, there was no queue! I pointed this out to the guy at the counter and he asked me if there'd been any big accidents on SZR that was stopping the punters from coming. I told him they'd all gone to du.
Ever since I got broadband installed in the house, my life has been blighted by a monthly trip to an Etisalat 'Business Centre' where I have had to stand in line for extended periods of time for the simple purpose of giving them money. Before I got broadband, I was able to pay for my various accounts using one of their clever cash payment machines. But while these machines could accept payment for dial-up accounts, broadband was a non-no.
So, imagine my surprise this afternoon: the barftuds had cut off my damn mobile, and I urgently needed to make some calls. I went to a cash payment machine, and lo! It now accepts payment for broadband! Maybe this has just happened. Or maybe it happened a year ago. I don't know, they never bothered to tell me.
The UAE's new telecom operator is now out of the closet and its name is 'du'. I was utterly unsure about the name yesterday when it hit the papers, but today I've got over the surprise. I had hoped we would get a fruit-based name, but this will du. It's catching, see!
There's a good interview in 7Days with Osman Sultan, the CEO of du, who comes across as a smart cookie. He's not an engineer, his background has been in customer-facing roles. And if there's one thing that Etisalat has traditionally been ultra-hyper-mega crap at, it's dealing with customers. So already, I'm likin' it.
Then there's this: EITC (du's official name) took over the telecoms arm of TECOM last month. TECOM is the management company for Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City and Knowledge Hamlet. TECOM itself had earlier swallowed up SahmNet, which was Emaar's telecoms arm for residents of The Hills, The Lakes, The Greens, The Meadows, The Puddles etc. Osman Sultan has said they will be re-vamping the 'customer interface' for these customers as soon as possible.
This is great, for us and for du. They get to practice on a smallish bunch of customers before rolling out the system to the whole country. And for us in the Cities it means that if we have a problem with connectivity there is now the possiblity that they will send us a technician who has actually seen a computer before, can solve the problem without lengthy calls to whoever it is back at the office who keeps the brain, will not suggest formatting the hard disk and will not leave until the job is done.
It will also mean that I will never again receive an email entitled 'Hazardous Condition Warning'. This is the standard email that TECOM telecom sends out whenever there's going to be a spot of downtime. Honestly, I almost died the first time I got one of these - they might just as well have said 'bomb alert, you are dead, sorry'.
And maybe they can sort out a billing system that users can understand. For VOIP telephone and fatband Interweb at my office in Media City I pay a fixed monthly fee (which is still way too much). I get a bill every month, and it sometimes has extra bells and whistles for mysterious stuff ('2 paperclips: attendance at site for 16-year-old trainee who wasted two hours of your time and still didn't solve the problem: posting 1 letter to Lithuania'). What it never has is any kind of accumulated balance, so if I don't pay one month it doesn't remind me about that outstanding amount, it just tells me about the amount for the previous month. They've never actually cut me off (and I'd have to kill them if they did, given the huge security deposit that they're not paying me any interest on). But it's irritating when somebody finally realises that there's a bunch of outstanding bills and they suddenly insist that they must be settled in the next ten minutes.
Du mobile, du broadband, du texting, du buy. Hmmm. Du is the long-awaited brand name of Emirates Corporation For Telephones And That Internet Thing And Faxes And Telegraphs Establishment (Branch) (Satwa) PJSC.
I read this article in Emirates Today about how the new Emirates Corporation For Telephones And That Internet Thing And Faxes And Telegraphs Establishment (Branch) (Satwa) PJSC will be competing with Etisalat a little bit on price. Not very heartening, chaps. But my eyeballs popped out of their sockets when I read the concluding paragraph:
Mohammed Omran, CEO of Etisalat, said: “We have never really acted as a monopoly. We have been competing indirectly with the rest of the Gulf, but now the competition will be direct.”
If that makes any kind of sense to any of you good people out there, please explain it to me!
Conflicting reports in some of today's papers. Emirates Today says the new telco will not be competing on price. 6Days says it will. Whatever. Having seen the stream of drivel emanating from the TRA ever since it was established, it is clear that the main thing that telecoms users want (prices on a par with the rest of the world) will not come easily. The main reason for this is the 50% profits surcharge that both companies must pay to the Government. Even though the Government is already a major shareholder in both companies and presumably gets a dividend from the profits.
The imaginatively named Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company has a great opportunity here. I hope they don't blow it. I hope they will listen to what consumers say they want, and convince the TRA to let them do it. So here's my wishlist:
Significantly lower prices for everything.
Great customer service: counter staff who are trained to treat customers as deities rather than potential criminals.
Lots of small offices in convenient locations (I could not believe how many high street shops the likes of Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and Virgin have in the UK - and no queues). And/or lots of payment machines that accept payment for everything.
Serious reduction in red tape. If irrelevant rubbish like tenancy contracts and passport copies going back three generations is required at all, then these things are recorded once and are never needed again. It's a phone company, not a branch of the Secret Service.
A coherent PR strategy that does not treat customers like morons, and does not lie to them.
Did I mention lower prices?
Deposit-free international roaming.
Optional proxy for Interweb access.
And a nice fluffy food-based brand image like Apple, Orange or Egg. Cheese, Banana, Shawarma. Something like that.
Not much to ask, is it? Fluffikins the Phone Company is expecting to start services in the latter half of 2006. They have a daunting task ahead of them, but I wish them the best of luck, I really do. They're gonna need it.
However, an official at the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority insisted that making internet phone calls illegal was not motivated by a desire to protect Etisalat. “We are protecting customers,” said Mohamed Gheyath, manager of IT affairs at the authority, who said that the companies selling pre-paid cards enabling customers to make internet calls have no licence and therefore there is no guarantee they comply with security and quality service standards.
Du mobile, du broadband, du texting, du buy. Hmmm. Du is the long-awaited brand name of Emirates Corporation For Telephones And That Internet Thing And Faxes And Telegraphs Establishment (Branch) (Satwa) PJSC.
Conflicting reports in some of today's papers. Emirates Today says the new telco will not be competing on price. 6Days says it will. Whatever. Having seen the stream of drivel emanating from the TRA ever since it was established, it is clear that the main thing that telecoms users want (prices on a par with the rest of the world) will not come easily. The main reason for this is the 50% profits surcharge that both companies must pay to the Government. Even though the Government is already a major shareholder in both companies and presumably gets a dividend from the profits.