Blue Chi’s

Even though many people dislike the policies made by the TRA (e.g. the upcoming ban of VPN) , I am one of the greatest fans of the TRA’s initiative to involve the public in the policy making process.

Even though Oman is still an absolute monarchy, the approach of the government over the years has been to slowly introduce venues for the public to participate in the policy making process to move Oman towards a more democratic system. Some might think that the development is way too slow, but it is there.

There are many examples of this starting from the establishment of the Shura Council, the passing of a Basic Statute of the State, and the development of role of the Oman Chamber of Commerce to allow the industry to lobby for changes in the law.

TRA has been brave enough to publish online draft regulations before they are passed so that the public is (a) aware of them before they are passed as law, and (b) able to comment on them and send feedback to the TRA. It is true that there is no guarantee that the TRA will accept any recommendations made by the public, but the fact that comments made by the public and the TRA’s responses to these comments are published online adds so much to the transparency of the process and helps us understand what the government is thinking.

According to my knowledge the TRA is the only government authority that does this, and I really applaud them for taking this initiative as it is in my opinion the greatest step made in involving the public in policy making process.

Sangeetha at the Digital Oman blog has taken the initiative to organize a gathering to Omani people on Twitter, which I will be attending. If you are on Twitter and going to be in Town on the 8th of October then feel free to come join us!

We are going to meet up in Barista Coffeeshop in Masa Mall at 7pm on the 8th of October.  For more info follow Sangeetha on Twitter and check her blog.

UPDATE: THIS EVENT IS MEANT TO BE FOR PEOPLE WHO USE TWITTER. PLEASE REGISTER AN ACCOUNT ON TWITTER BEFORE JOINING AND THEN POST AT SANGEETHA’S BLOG TO CONFIRM YOUR ATTENDANCE.

A UAE newspaper called the National ran a story written by Saleh al Shaibany about media censorship in Oman (link), which to my surprise quotes me a couple of times in a manner that suggests that I was interviewed for this article. I did not know about my mention in this article, I clicked the link on Twitter and was surprised to see my name there.

I was not interviewed for this article and my quotes were taken out of context from a number of posts I have written in the past. Saleh al Shaibany never got in touch with me prior to the publication of this article. I do not agree with or support the opinions mentioned in this article.

In the post from which my second quote was taken I argued that that the government in Oman, unlike neighboring countries, does not in fact censor the internet on political grounds, as it relies instead of legal methods, such as the criminal law or breach of confidence, to prosecute the authors. Controversial websites that criticize government officials and those that leak confidential documents are still open the public. My post made it clear that the problem of censorship in Oman is due to random acts of Omantel and the inefficiency of the company. My other blog was blocked by mistake and not because of its content.

I am very upset about this whole experience. Any reasonable reader would think that I was interviewed for this article and that I am in support of the message behind it. I am very disappointed to see my quotes used out of context without any reference to where they were taken from.

I emailed the editor of The National and the head of the Foreign Desk at the paper. I’m still waiting for the response.

(Photo Credits: CarbonNYC)

Controversial blogger and wannabe political activist Ammar Al Maamari wrote a nice post yesterday on the various problems with Applied Science Colleges in Oman.

There are six Applied Science Colleges (ASCs) in Oman in various cities outside the capital, these colleges were previously Educational Colleges that trained school teachers until the country oversaturated with school teachers with no schools to teach in. These colleges now teach design, communications, information technology, and business administration.

Ammar suggests that these colleges face a number of old problems that existed for Educational Colleges and some new ones that appeared with the quick conversion of these colleges. Such problems include:

• The inadequacy of the teaching staff due to their poor rushed selection process that was pressured by the need to convert these colleges ASAP. The majority of teachers teach subjects that they do not specialize in. Some Omani staff also have no training whatsoever and do not serve any purpose.
• There is a shortage in English language teachers and the ones that currently teach have no experience in teaching. Students have difficulty in understanding them, especially if the teachers are Indian. The English teachers were brought through a training agency that apparently got individuals who have no qualifications or any history in teaching English.
• The English taught in the foundation year is general English and not one specific to any of the majors taught in later years. The majority of the subject teaching materials were brought from New Zealand are their level of English is way higher than that of the students.
• Due to the shortage of teaching staff, some colleges are unable to teach the courses which the students entered with the intention to study. To solve this problem colleges require the students to move to another college in another city to study the course they desire. For example, a student in Salalah would be told, after three years in the course, that he has to move to Ibri in order to acquire a degree in communications. Of course, students were not informed about this when they started college and the majority of them are unable to move to another city, so they end up changing their course into something that their current college offers even if they never intended to study that subject.

Ammar offers a number of suggestions for this problem, the first is to merge all these colleges into a single institution that is located in a single place. This way duplicate costs would be saved and only the best of the work force could be selected to run the university. An alternative solution suggested by Ammar is to abolish ALL these colleges and use the RO 15 million used to run them each year to teach the students at existing private universities in the Sultanate instead. Ammar is aware that this is an exterme measure that could affect the job opportunities taken by the locals and would also require the expansion of private universities to be able to accept the thousands of students currently taught in ASCs.

I personally never really had any idea about what happens in these colleges. If you can read Arabic make sure you read the full post by Ammar here.

Just saw the new brand identity of Oman on Sangeetha’s Digital Oman. It was launched this evening by the Oman Brand Management Unit (OBMU). The logo was designed by Landor – the same company that produced in the past the logos for Pepsi, Microsoft, FedEx, and many more.

I’m not really sure how feel about the new identity, I am not sure what I was expecting, but I didn’t see this coming. I was not “WOW”ed by it. I’m not used to seeing all these new Oman related logos that do not have any of the colours of the flag.

I think that a brand of a country is not only targeted at people outside the country, but also at people inside the country as it might be a tool used to alter our own perception of our country.

I’m outraged by the fact that there is no website for OBMU or the new brand identity. I was checking the websites of all the horrible Omani newspapers and couldn’t find a single picture of the logo until Sangeetha posted about it. 

What do you guys think of the new logo?

(Photo credits: Miskan)

I would like to start by saying that I really hate the Omani Internet, I cannot think of a single website to visit when I’m bored and just feel like browsing something weird, funny, or entertaining. If it weren’t for blogs there would be no such thing as Omani internet… well, you can still argue that it does not exist, but that’s beside the point.

I usually look down all Arabic literature because it is irrelevant and out of the touch with the rest of the world. We do not have a literature industry similar to that found in the English speaking world, people generally do not read anything other than newspapers and magazines, and 90% of the books found in the horrible annual book exhibition are religious books.

Recently I discovered a number of Omani Arabic blogs which changed my opinion in Omani Arabic literature, they made me fall in love with Arabic all over again. The content of these blogs is topical and local, yet it is written in awesomely classy Arabic full of figures of speech. I just love their style and how they write in formal Arabic yet integrate local Omani dialect terms to explain a ‘cultural’ concept the same way you would use a French term in an English piece to describe something sophisiticated.

I would like to highlight this article by Blogger Muawiyah describing Omani stereotypes. This post is not comical or even really critical, but merely descriptive of the of the aspirations and beliefs of Omani people. It is a relatively long post, but I really enjoyed it.

Another nice Omani Arabic blog is written by Hamed Al Ghaithi, I loved his post on “Daily Visions” in which he describes several unconnected scenes he was in recently. Most of them are completely random, but yet very personal and vulnerable. It was amazing how the post ended in a new paragraph simply saying “regardless of all the let downs and the failures, life is still fun and delicious” [my emphasis].

I’m so in love with Arabic blogs, I’ve been wanting to start blogging in Arabic for a while. I hate the fact that I am not confident in my Arabic anymore for the lack of practice, it is shameful and stupid. ARABIC IS MY FREAKING FIRST LANGUAGE. Maybe I should start blogging in Arabic to regain my confidence.

This is a reminder for all of those interested in .OM domain names, the deadline for submitting feedback to the TRA’s public consutlation paper on .OM domain name framework is November 8th (Next Saturday). So if you have any opinion on how domain names in Oman are regulated then please take a moment to read this and send your feedback.

You can download the proposed framework from here (Warning PDF link).

The Tender Board made a press release today (Arabic Text) in which it announced the values of all the tenders that were recently approved for upcoming government projects: One worth 5 milion Omani Rials was approved for doing additional works for the expansion of the Internet broadband coverage to provide the services for a 100,000 users.

Here is the actual text in Arabic:

الاعمال الاضافية على المناقصة رقم 1172006 توسعة شبكة النطاق العريض لتوصيل خدمة الانترنت لعدد 100 الف مشترك بمبلغ وقدره 000ر000ر5 ر.ع.

These 5 million rials are for additional works for this tender, which presumably has started years ago (for another separate sum). It is unclear if these “additional works” are to expand the broadband network to a greater number of users (So this 100K could be an additional to the existing number from the previous tender) or to do something else completely (e.g. unforeseen changes required for the infrastructure, 100K users are those that had access to it from before and the access wil not expand to new users).

I do not know if this project is managed by the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MOTC) or the Telecom Regulation Authority (TRA).

Times of Oman and Shabiba are running a press release about the Sultan ordering the establishment of a Drama and Theatre Committee to set a plan for the development of this sector in Oman. Read the press release here.

Just learnt from Kishor’s that the first MVNO in Oman has received its final approval from the Ministry of Transport and Telecom. So now we are going to have a third operator in addition to Oman Mobile and Nawars. The new operator is called FRiENDi, it was founded in 2006 in Dubai Internet City.

It is unclear if the company’s brand name will be FRiENDi here as well. The company’s CEO is Antti Arponen, (I checked their website and it has somebody else, so I assuem that this is the CEO of the Omani company only), he is Finnish.

The Chairman of FRiENDi in Oman is Mohamed Bin Yousuf Bin Alawi. I think that he is a board member of Raysut Cement and that he is the son of the Minister of Foreign Affairs H.E. Yousuf Bin Alawi.

An MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) is basically a company that buys a huge number of calling minutes from a regular mobile network operator and then sells them back to the public under its own brand. This works in some places because when you buy a huge number of calling minutes you get them cheaper than the regular price, and then you can sell these minutes at a higher price that you paid to make a profit.

However, because an MVNO does not have its own infrastructure and merely resells the minutes it gets from somebody esle, an MVNO cannot offer any real new services. So, if Oman Mobile never gets 3G, then an MVNO that uses Oman Mobile as its provider will not be able to offer 3G. Nawras on the other hand is not an MVNO and has its own infrastrucure, so it managed to offer services that Oman Mobile do not have. (eg 3G)

The mobile telecom business relies greatly on customer service. MVNOs usually rely on offering better customer support and try to develop a relationship with the customer to get them rather than attemping to use new services or lower prices to lure them.

It will be really interesting to see how an MVNO performs in Oman, additional competition in the market is always nice.

Update: Just as Muscati has said in his post below, the another MVNO has been approved as well. The company is named Injaz, it’s chairman is Abdul Rahman Al Harthy and it’s CEO is Sameer Saadah.