The Internet revolution reaches Arabia

You have new mail. Shall I read them out to you now, sir?' asks your computer as you walk into your office. Sitting in a café, your daughter shops for the very latest mobile phone; she asks her notebook to search for the lowest price worldwide, and it orders one for her from a shop in Amman.

An illiterate old man in a village in southwestern Saudi Arabia is having trouble with his eyesight; 20 minutes after visiting the local cyberhealth station, a Riyadh-based opthamologist makes his diagnosis and e-mails a prescription. Scenes from the latest science-fiction thriller? Maybe. Reality in the Arab world in less than a decade? Certainly.

Five years is an era in the rapidly evolving world of the Internet and new technology. Consider that when this magazine was launched, just over five years ago, the office was equipped with computers - but just one with a tortuously slow, dial-up Internet connection.

Articles were received by fax, or if we were lucky, via diskette posted by mail. Searching for photos meant a trip to the local agency; newspapers were our main source for breaking news; and work was extremely centralized, since there was no efficient alternative.

Today, this magazine communicates seamlessly and simultaneously with its offices across Europe and the Arab world. Even internal communication now primarily takes place by e-mail. Photographers worldwide can send digital photos in nearly real time; correspondents keep in constant touch from Baghdad, Riyadh, Washington and Dubai.

The news from the region and the world breaks ceaselessly, via the Internet, offering a range of opinions, the wildest mix of fact and fiction.
In five years, technology has transformed the way we work and live. And there's no question that that transformation will continue to keep pace - everywhere in the world.

In the Middle East, demand for new technology has outstripped supply; demand not just for more powerful laptops, smaller cellphones and WiFi cafés, but demand for the genuinely transformative power of technology. The power to connect with the world.

Five years ago in the Middle East, the typical Internet service provider (ISP) was a state telecom monopoly, which saw the Internet as more of an irritant than an opportunity. These state-run companies mostly invested next to nothing in developing access to new technologies like the Internet.

Infrastructure was extremely basic, and using the Internet and e-mail a painfully slow process. Meanwhile, connectivity fees were exorbitantly high - so high, in fact, that websites were launched throughout the region with the sole intent of accusing the ISPs of cheating customers.

On the demand side, the situation was hardly better. The high price of a personal computer, widespread illiteracy and the general lack of awareness about the Internet meant that the penetration rates were among the lowest in the world, with some Arab countries recording barely 0.01 percent penetration as late as 1999.

However, since then Internet penetration rates have skyrocketed - at least in some parts of the Arab world. According to a recent report by Amman-based Arab Advisors, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE are the current regional leaders in terms of overall connectivity. Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria are the Arab world's least connected countries.

In the United Arab Emirates, where Internet user penetration is among the highest in the world, a third of the 3 million residents of the UAE regularly uses the Internet, either professionally or personally or, increasingly, both.

Maroua Naim, the general manager of Emirates Internet and Multimedia (EIM), the wholly owned subsidiary of Etisalat and the sole ISP in the UAE, is justifiably proud of the strides made by EIM.

'In terms of the infrastructure, we are among the best in the whole world. We are focused on introducing the latest technologies so that lack of infrastructure will never be a hurdle to Internet access,' she says, adding that already 90 percent of the connections in the country are through broadband, by far the highest broadband penetration rate in the world.

In the region's near future, the Internet will become as common as a telephone, and mobility will be the norm. Another development that is already underway but will mature in the coming years is the convergence between various technologies.

All electronic devices at home, in the offices or in communal public spaces will be able to communicate with each other. The personal digital assistant (PDA) will become much more versatile, capable of performing multiple tasks simultaneously - shortly, we will have voice-activated PDAs in the market and, not long after, all technology will be voice activated. The convergence of these technologies will simplify life tremendously.

Convergence will not be limited just to hardware. Software convergence and compatibility, too, will dramatically increase. Today, Microsoft products are incompatible with those of, say, Sun or IBM. If you use MSN Messenger, you can't get in touch with your friends on Yahoo Messenger.

Each company, and especially Microsoft, is basically holding its clients hostage and preventing them from using software produced by its rivals. But this will change dramatically in the coming decade. In the future, compatibility will be the watchword.

'We will definitely see the standardization of various channels,' says Mohammed Khatib, general manager of Microsoft Middle East. 'Today, for instance, if you use a Yahoo calendar and I use an MSN calendar, we can't compare our agendas and decide when to meet. But in the future, you will see convergence. Compatibility has to be ensured.''

It is not just at the level of products, technology and access that things will change for the better. A dramatic improvement will also take place in terms of content, and thus the reasons why people will turn to the Internet for information and entertainment.

Khatib believes the Net will increasingly become the platform for our daily lives. 'We will be using the Internet much more often and more in-depth. People of all ages will use it for diverse purposes; we are already getting glimpses of the changes that will occur in the next few years.''

The main driver of Internet growth will be youth, especially teenagers. In the near future, watching movies or listening to music on the Internet will become the norm. But the use of the Internet will not stop there.

Khatib describes a day in the life of a teenage girl living in the Gulf in 2010. 'She will wake up and watch the news and listen to music while she gets dressed for school. En route to school, she could be chatting with her friends about the day ahead. At school, she will do all her studies and relevant research on the Internet. Once she gets back home, she will perhaps watch a movie or do a bit of chatting and shopping on the web. Then she will finish her homework and perhaps go to bed listening to her favorite lullaby online.''

While a new-look Internet will definitely attract users of all ages around the globe, youth will be the real beneficiaries of the development of content and technologies - and they will also be the drivers of this growth.

Experts believe that businesses will try to attract this segment even more as their spending capacities, both in absolute terms as well as a percentage of the household spend, will more than double in the next decade.

By 2010, the Middle East will also address one of its biggest historical weaknesses: the lack of adequate local content. Microsoft's Khatib says that he is confident that the region will see a boom in development of local content, offering reasons for the local population of all ages and both sexes to use the Internet far more than they do today.

While some ISPs have already begun addressing this, the development of the Internet in the region will depend to a large extent on the development of content that the local population can relate to.

Besides business and consumers, education will be the largest driver of growth, both for hardware and software. Many countries in the Gulf are already in the midst of ambitious programs of connecting all their schools to the Internet.

In the near future, the role of the Internet in education will be much more prevalent. Teachers will use the Internet to prepare their notes and as a vital teaching aid in the classroom. Syllabi and entire courses will be downloaded from the Internet, and examinations will be held online.

Phoning home. As the development of the Internet in the Arab world continues, there will be another revolution taking place simultaneously, in the telecommunications sector, the backbone of the Internet. Though many Gulf states already have fairly advanced infrastructure, the same cannot be said of the rest of the Arab world.

But analysts predict that even the laggards, like Lebanon and Algeria, will boost their telecom infrastructure rapidly in the next few years.
Attracting investment to modernize the telecom infrastructure is not enough, though.

Across the Arab world, there is an urgent need for the establishment of competent regulatory authorities. They will not only set the rules of the game but also monitor all the players to ensure fair play in the market.

Yet another challenge for the governments lies in privatizing the telecom companies and also opening the sector to domestic and foreign competition. Some countries have already moved significantly down this road but several others, notably the UAE and Saudi Arabia, must move at a faster pace in the next decade.

'Some countries have already taken this decision,' points out Vincento Nesci, vice president at French telecom equipment manufacturer Alcatel. 'Others will eventually be obliged to take this step due to market pressure.''

In the telecom sector, giants are already emerging from the region and they will be able to compete with the world's mightiest firms. One of the companies best placed to expand rapidly overseas is cash-rich Etisalat, the UAE telecom monopoly. Etisalat has already begun investing in external markets, a process which is bound to pick up speed in the coming few years.

By 2010, the combined might of a rejuvenated telecom sector and improved Internet penetration rates will ensure that there is freer circulation of information throughout the region. The technology revolution will also lead to the establishment of the first truly global marketplace - of goods and services, as well as of ideas.

For the Middle East, though, the challenge is not simply to import the hardware and software to connect to the world; the real challenge is to export the region's own greatness, to contribute to the ongoing technology revolution and not simply to be a passive consumer of its latest fads.