I was there when it started, and...

7 Years ago, I was a fresh engineering grad, one of my uncles was an investor in what was then the hottest talk-of-town new telecom venture; everything was hyped, from the uninspiring typical name it was given, the choice of technology it ran, to the "miracle" financing it secured and the tasteless celebrity who -dis- graced the launch party, the story of XPress telecom got far deeper concatenation with me beyond my family affiliation and employment in it and here are some excerpts.

It's worth noting that today; the company will be formally shutting down its regular service; shrinking back from its kingdome wide coverage to Amman & Aqaba and limiting its offering to its unique Push-to-talk (Walkie-talkie) service until further notice, but we'll come back to that later...

The uniqueness of my story stems from the various perspectives, exposures & involvements i had; i was a launch employee (launch ad here); my family was the major investor in it; my cousin (whom i look highly too) was its chief for the most part of its heydays and later I became a minority shareholder and found myself returning as a consultant helping in minding the shop; keeping the ship intact until a salvage was attained.

I'm not sure how articulate I can be in giving my account; but one thing i know for a fact that very few can appreciate the intimacy many of XPress employees had (and some still) years after they left the company; where they invested years of effort, dedication & hard work to make it a success story. Each of us have powerful memories, hopes & aspirations that was one way or another nurtured in XPress. In a sense, its far greater in magnitude than the loss of the shareholders investments & assets.

I for one was a field engineer at the time, relentlessly executing my duties (and overlapping with the duties of others to their discontent), the network which stood once at 160 sites (tower) strong; i knew them by heart beyond technical numbering and parameters; they had names, neighbors, they had stories & for the most part; I left a little of me in each and every bolt, knob, wire & equipment I was part of.

I vividly recall the ecstatic build-up towards the launch, the custom made handset gifted to his majesty, the very first call we made 4am in the morning; I have it captured on video; sneaking my name into a BS press release, last minute provision of coverage in Aqaba during the official launch ceremony after 36 hours of straight work; memories rushing at the rate 12 gigabytes a minute as i type... so you can imagine why things seems surreal today; as i use the network knowing that the last call might not be too far!

Its rather hard for everyone to appreciate or empathize with the sort of feelings that's going through me now, barely I am able to comprehend it, but no doubt its a mix; if not totally charged & volatile.

Years later and until few months back, i became the person I am; doing telecom consultancies and what have you; I looked back at the deteriorating situation of XPress and couldn't stand it; it took a triggering point and a help of a trustful friend to bold-up and approach the board of the company to help in whatever way possible to have a turnaround or at least allowing it to die gracefully like it started with dignity.

4 months i spent in this part-time assignment, I was in a unique position to retroactively witness how it came to this; stood over the ruins of a glorified past; a pile of dozens unused fleet cars; a pale headquarters that stood witness to the company's predicaments and a network (my true love affair) in dire situation were unthinkable sacrifices were made to keep the whole thing going... surviving one day at time!

Today; I find myself taking an active part in putting this child to a quasi rest; mostly in a graceful order but not without unnecessary bad-PR splashes; but it was far better than the inevitable nosedive crash that was around the corner, at least this is how i justify things reassuring myself...

It's not the end of the XPress story as yet; it may live to chirp off another day, until then it'll step aside into the shadows and hope for the best.

P.S: I post this as a "time capsule" for me; not the usual bulletproofed blog-worthy reading material, i post it unedited and in its original flow

An alternative ISP, with an unlikely feature (or flaw)

Since I moved back to Amman at the start of this year, I was looking for an alternative to Orange fixed and internet services, not because their services were necessarily bad, but because they're offered by the incumbent who dominated the scene for far too long that they tend to take their customers for granted, and I don't want to be taken for granted.

Then a good friend of mine put me on the friendly-users list of the new fixed-wireless broadband internet service provider Wi-Tribe, offering me months of free (a geek drea0m) uncapped bandwidth 1Mbps connection, to the internet. Then Wi-Tribe launched commercially, the contacted me to upgrade my friendly-user status to that of a paying-customer one, to which I welcomed without hesitance, though downgraded to 512Kpbs, and later got my start-up company to get their internet fix from them at 256Kpbs all to my complete satisfaction, to the point that I actually upgraded back to 1Mpbs.

I'm satisfied with the level of service I’m getting, though if you don't pay upfront, you'll get tangled up with monthly payment related issues like weak retail network and nice staff but untrained on their billing system. Beside that, my friend Sari wrote a good review of their service, though I don't totally agree with it...

I still firmly believe in Wi-Tribe as an alternative ISP for folks in Amman (west Amman until further notice), and I will still recommend it to anyone who's fed-up with Orange and ADSL, as long as one acknowledges its FIXED WIRELESS (it plugs to mains power, so there you go) and it requires the modem (CPE) near a window.

BUT (there you go Jad) I came across a flaw in the service being offered, and that is "most" of their user's computers are visible to one another, especially those on VISTA with media players forcing its media server option onto making all the media content on one's computer basically "stream able" to endorsed users.

I did call Wi-Tribe call-center, and ensured that my friends who work there are made aware of the problem and its serious ramifications on their users, but I believe I’m obliged to inform others of what to do until the matter is resolved, which is to disable both network discovery and file sharing and enable windows firewall. For those who have their modem connected through a router (wireless or otherwise), get a technical friend to impose MAC filtration.

Batelco Jordan CEO joins XPress

Once again, another episode in the Jordanian telecommunication sector, notorious for its plentiful surprises, Marwan Juma an old-school figure in the IT & telecommunication scene in Jordan resigned from Batelco and joined the ranks of XPress as the CEO, taking over from Mr. Suleiman Ma'ani whose been the latter's CEO since its establishment back in late 2002.

The drastic changes in XPress is taking place after a new shareholder beefed up XPress's capital and became the managing shareholder, which usually entails sweeping management changes.

Good luck to both men wherever they settle for they both hold high credentials, bright track record and a credible reputation.

I have worked during Mr. Maani's reign, and beside stating his charismatic personality and thorough leadership felt through the organization, Mr.Maani was loved (or at least respected) by most employees even after he left, i have not encountered a single negative resentment or hard feeling felt by any of his x-employees, even by those who think (from a professional perspective) that they were let down by XPress as a hall.

As for XPress, I hope that along with such changes, there'll be some serious revision of their marketing strategy, for they do offer a genuine addition to the Jordanian telecom sector with their services but they seem to be badly communicated in the market place.

Read more here:

Al-Rai report (Arabic)
Addustour (Arabic)
Al-Ghad (Arabic) with really more info than the official Batelco statement.

Scandal at MobileCom: 1,000 car winners due to a fault!

This piece of news & pictures came from an insider, apparently hundreds of MobileCom customers who subscribed to some car competition gathered in front of MobileCom HQ sometime ago to claim their car after receiving a SMS message from MobileCom congratulating them on winning a promoted car.

The insider said that an employee at the marketing department sent the message to some 1,000 customers (who subscribed to the competition earlier on) by mistake while he was testing the winning SMS message that was suppose to be sent to the lucky winner, and those who received it gathered spontaneously the next morning at MobileCom HQ to collect their car!

Obviously the ground was fertile for speculations to thrive that Fastlink had something to do with in light of the incidents earlier, but putting this aside, i can only imagine the short ecstatic thrill of the winning customers and the sheer disappointment they felt the next day as they saw many of their likes claiming the very same bounty and slowly figuring out that there seem to be a mistake of some sort, a dream too good to be true for many.

The insider also told me that one of the winners was demanding not only the car, but also compensation for the Kunafah he distributed promptly after he received the message! Having said that, i wonder how this will be resolved, and if there will be some sort of compensation if any?!

If i was in charge over there, I'd be creative and exploit the episode by actually giving away 1,000 cars to absorb the bad publicity and boost some proactive synergy out of it by showing some surprising commitment and absorption of the situation!

Not necessarily giving away the promoted car which i think was a mid-range Cadillac, but perhaps some branded Cherry or something in that order, but i don't think MobileCom is brave enough or can even fund such a radical step.

At any measure, here are some pictures to go with the piece above, i just hope my insider is not an imaginative daydreamer who made this whole thing up, i didn't have tie to authnticate but MobileCom already pulled the car promo from its website!

Fastlink’s success is the highlight of the Jordanian consumer failure!

During my last trip to Amman, I called an electrician to come and fix something & when I gave him my mobile number –not on Fastlink (Zain)- he reiterated in protest “ما في عندك خط فاست؟” “Haven’t you got a Fast number?”… I paused for a second & thought to myself; either Fastlink (Zain) has a one hell of a cult-following inducing marketing strategy or we are just a bunch of easily milked taken-for-granted consumers!

We stand today at a market place were –technically- four different mobile operators are burning themselves out to the verge of bankruptcy to keep their pace in the competition to lock-in as many customers as possible, yet what we get in the end is an erratic –guesstimate- market share of 61% Fastlink (Zain), 27% MobileCom, 9% Umniah & 3% XPress!

Have it been the case that Fastlink (Zain) is a decent operator that provides a quality service with a matching customer service & fair competitive pricing; I wouldn’t have given it a flying thought if Fastlink is leading the market or not, I’ll even applaud their success!

Yet Fastlink (Zain) treat its taken-for-granted customers like old mules (Examples from the blogsphere: here & here), their network performance is poor (despite the comprehensive coverage they boost) & their pricing is based on the premise that everyone is using Fastlink & no other network exist!

Allow me to elaborate by briefly –not- telling the Mobile story of little Jordan:

Once upon a time, a company called Fastlink was granted a license to operate a mobile network in a lovely little country called Jordan, at the time, the cost of building, operating & maintaining such a network was costly, so obviously their target customers were a niche, hence the vulnerability of their business that required it to be protected by a 5-year exclusive monopoly over the market.

During those 5 year golden years, Fastlink (Zain) managed to milk the slowly growing niche of customers with a ridiculously high pricing & no emphasize on the service it offered or the quality of it... but everything has an ending, and so did its monopoly by the entry of another operator MobileCom, both took part in a duet of a further 5 years of duopoly with exclusivity over the market place.

At the time, Fastlink (Zain) recognized it will be loosing it’s customers rapidly, after all the advent of competition is tempting for the previously choice-less punters, so they did overhaul their service, most notably was the introduction of a real customer service call-center with adequate number of sweet-talking agents to meet the demand of their 85k punters at the time.

Yet Fastlink (Zain) found itself in a situation facing an incompetent competitor unable to penetrate the market while competing over simple-minded consumers! Fastlink (Zain) spared no effort in capitalizing on those two underlying factors.

By launching a new pricing plan that made it ridiculously expensive to call anyone not on Fastlink (Zain) in comparison with the relatively cheaper – but still expensive- price for calling its own customers, they rendered any good rate plan offered by MobileCom irrelevant because punters who sign up with MobileCom assumed that they will not be called by their Fastlink (Zain) counterparts!

How imbecilic is that! Since when the feasibility of anything is based on the savings made for others! If company A charges you a very high for calling company B & charging less for calling its own, while company B is charging you adequately to call both, which one will you choose?

Why should you care if 100k out of a potentially growing market were initially signed up with company A out of no choice, why not create a balance in the market place to keep a truly dynamic competition in place!

Our incompetence as Jordanian consumers stemmed from the fact that we allowed ourselves to be restrained into a thinking pattern that jstified our worrisome if those who will call us will refrain from doing so because they’ll be charged a premium!

Why should we care if those calling us made the wrong choice by opting for the company that charges a premium while they had the CHOICE otherwise!

Yes, MobileCom didn't capitalize the full potential of it being a new entrant or utilize the environment dictated by the duopoly they enjoyed along with Fastlink (Zain)!

It’s out-of-place marketing strategy & complex –yet cheaper- pricing did not make it easier for punters to make the choice either, so MobileCom is liable within this context.

Whether the government came to the aid of MobileCom, or the latter came up with the novel idea of offering the army personnel a special rate-plans -something that was almost unheard of in this industry-; the strategy worked & the company stayed afloat… until today!

The failure of the Jordanian consumer turned Fastlink (Zain) into a mammoth that enjoyed 5 years of monopoly charging premiums for a service that rapidly cost-ed less to offer, with further 5 years of pity competition that could’ve been more considerable!

And even today, while MobileCom is boosting the best network quality a GSM network can offer, & while Umniah is literally burning prices beyond feasibility (trust me on this one: any cross-network minute sold under 5 piasters doesn’t cover its cost) & XPress is offering a differentiated flat-rate professional service to corporate customers that does actually save money and improve the way business is done, yet with all that on offer you still find a cult-like following for Fastlink (Zain)!

Mr. Electritian, if Fastlink (Zain) is charging you so much for doing the unthinkable act of calling punters on other networks, then for Allah’s sake switch to another provider that charges you fairly for calling anyone!

Damn this number of yours that you have cherished for oh-my 2 years or so… no one cares if you changed it, your prestige will not shatter into pieces at the gates of dunes club, no one will think that you’re a Hafartali except for this insignificant lady, and definitely you’ll earn more by saving on your telephony costs!

A fellow blogger once commented on the lack of innovation in the Jordanian telecom market, but I don’t blame the telcos of Jordan, why should they through another dime while they see the incompetence of it’s potential customers whom are happy even when they’re treated like old mules overlooking the choices they have in a competition-driven market-place.

For Allah’s sake we’re content and even easily amused with merely premium SMS & “new” valued-added services (VAS) such as playing a dreadful song instead of the ringing-tone for those who have the courage to call outside Fastlink (Zain)! Why should any of the networks invest in 3G…

At the end, if you’re a Fastlink (Zain) customer, I have some FACTS for you:

Fact No. 1 No, not everyone is on Fastlink (Zain)! that might’ve been the case few years back thanks to people who think like you do.

Fact No. 2 You have a choice of 3 other operators whom will probably give you a free massage if you decide to opt for their service.

Fact No. 3 Yes, Fastlink (Zain) have superior network coverage, but unless you venture allot outside cities & main highways, you shouldn’t be worried to be left in the cold.

Fact No. 4 Their network is congested! Again, thanks to people who think like you do.

Fact No. 5 What’s the point in having a mature regulatory body, compitition & a maturing sector while consumers are not.

The didn’t-I-tell-you-so Ego is oozing, despite the disinterest: MobileCom is rebranding.

My speculation months back was well-placed, MobileCom is going ahead with it’s rebranding to become yet another Orange under the France Telecom cluster.

It’ll be interesting to see how they’ll tackle the issue of it’s already axiom-ed misunderstanding that Orange is an Israeli company! from the press release, the new CEO bluntly referred to this explicitly…

Not a very smart move in my book! It’s like looking gay-ish while everyone thinking that you are & you plead otherwise by chanting “I’m not gay”… NO, you go and find yourself a girlfriend or something! (The metaphor fell short of correlacting the girlfriend bit)

This will surely catalyze the dynamics of the telecom sector in Jordan, though it’s about time we see truly novel new services being introduced, not merely new ways to get ring-tones and premium SMS! We want wireless broadband for starters…

The full news item from Al-Ghad:

http://www.alghad.jo/?news=87356

A Speculation: MobileCom’s shy “Orange” rebranding!

I am a loyal MobileCom customer, though I do find myself skeptical of how they ran their business ever since they entered the market 5 years ago with a favorable duopoly that could have been better utilized to rapidly capture market share and block the polarization of the market to avoid creating a mammoth out of the first operator Fastlink!

Beside that, it seems they have finally understood the dynamics of the market despite their years of shameful financial performance and ridicule market penetration, a bit latent perhaps; but in no contrast to Fastlink's practice, who only realized the true potential of the market when it felt the nearing of competition, which proved to be impotent at the time!

It is no secret, MobileCom is JT’s baby, and JT is France telecom adopted baby, the latter have many operations around the world, and most of it’s mobile networks are branded as “Orange”, a brand that originated in the UK.

For the past two years, I was aware that MobileCom was enjoying a degree of technical backing from France Telecom through its Mobile arm “Orange”, especially with the entrance of XPress as a new player in the local market with incomparable set of technological credentials, as they tried to patch up a service similar to the latter’s push-to-talk offering...

But only recently did it become apparent that Orange is now influencing MobileCom in terms of marketing and branding!

MobileCom website had a recent facelift, and not surprisingly, it used the exact template used by most Orange websites around the world (there are 15+ of them). And despite the different tone of the color orange that is used in the coloring scheme, everything else is almost identical…

Enter their running ad campaigns, they have standardized the use of black background and a certain font and layout that are also consistent with Orange branding throughout their operations around the world. My speculation would be that MobileCom are in the middle of a shy rebranding, perhaps in the coming months they’ll boost the tone of the orange color to match Orange’s distinct level, and later use the same packaging style, price-plans structures dictated by Orange until the switchover becomes a matter of a mere overnight logo swap -almost.

The benefits will be that MobileCom will enjoy the powerful synergy stemming from the utilization of an international brand (perhaps mobile content blah blah), and enhance their market penetration and segmentation capabilities.

On the down side, it’ll definitely loose its local feel as a Jordanian operator, as well as the perpetuating benefit for being the first to dedicate a portion of its resources to offer tailored packages to the service men and women of the Armed forces. A major backlash can also be expected if it was associated with Orange's Israeli operation, as the brand "Orange" in general is widely recognized as an Israeli brand here in Jordan, this is not the case for sure, yet such misconception would require heavy campaigning in order ot be addressed, without anticipating it to be cleansed any time soon.

Yet another twist in the Jordanian mobile communication sector that will only enforce its utter uniqueness!