Highly anticipated and finally here is the first international conference for the Arab internet industry: IBAG, International Business Alliance Group, presents ArabNet 2010: Trends and Opportunities in Arab Web Business. The conference will be held in Beirut on March 25-26, 2010 with the support of Endeavor Jordan, the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship, the Syrian Young Entrepreneurs Association and YallaStartup!.

ArabNet

ArabNet is bringing together the internet community to network and help launch the hottest startups from across the region – that means you! Top investors, internet executives and leaders from Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, AdMob and Intel will adress subjects that are critical to the Arab Web Industry including: e-commerce, gaming, mobile, content, online advertising, social networking, new media, and start-up fundraising.

Key to the conference are pitch sessions: Ideathon & Startup Demo.  This is the place to match talent with opportunity.

The Ideathon is looking for 10 select entrepreneurs to introduce their fresh startup ideas to eager investors in a rapid-fire pitch session. Similarly, the Demo will select startups with innovative products to pitch and exhibit their companies for the duration of the conference.

We are currently accepting applications from entrepreneurs and startups from all over the region with strong ideas and products.

Visit ArabNet.me to learn more and apply.

Finally, Arabic domain names.

Years ago, when I used to read a couple of local and regional computer magazines, they used to mentioned something about the future of the internet and if we will be able to use Arabic domain names instead of the English ones.

According to the BBC News, the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) board yesterday voted to allow non-Latin domain names; such as Arabic and Chinese.

The first Arabic or any other non-Latin domain name, or what they call Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), will be available within 9 month from now!

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine who is using a wireless router and modem in the same device, that he got from outside of Jordan, suddenly lost his internet connection, after a trillion trial to call Orange to see what happened, they checked the connection and told him that all is well and nothing is wrong with his connection.

I went to his place to check what’s going on, tried to connect using Orange’s modem and it was working. Then what would I do to get the right settings for the DSL connection of Orange to make the other modem works. Another trillion time trying to call Orange Customer Service Center and the answer machine keeps saying that all lines are busy. After like 15 minutes they answered the call and i started to talk to the customer serivce representative trying to get any information from him about the DSL connection settings. The only thing that he could say that they don’t help me to get any other modem up and running. As if we got the modem from one of their competitors in Jordan (you know, we have like 10 companies in Jordan that have the service).

The customer service guy told me that the only thing he can do is to help me to login to Orange’s modem so I can get more information from it. He gave me the IP address of the modem and guess what! it wasn’t the right one. Is that a policy (I doubt)? or the people who are supposed to support us themselves need the support?

It’s obvious that it’s not a policy especially when the support team of Orange visited my friend at home to check if there is something wrong again and they couldn’t get the modem works again! What I did is I moved to my home, logged in to my modem and got the right settings, and finally it’s connected again.

Yesterday I received a message from Zain that I never expect to get anytime soon. Finally Zain ADSL is the first ISP that provide broadband internet connection up to 8M of speed.

Directly I called the customer service center of Zain to get more information, and I figured out that they provide the service with 4, 6 and 8Mb. I asked about the prices of the service which are less than getting the connection for 2Mb. Do you know why? you don’t have to pay anything to Orange (Jordan Telecom Group) now to get the service. We will only pay for Zain as an ISP without any monthly payment to Orange. The installation fees are 70JDs for those who don’t have an internet connection already and they are offering the service with free installation until the end of this month.

The dream doesn’t stop there, Zain will be providing WiMAX service in Jordan with the same speed. But still they don’t have the small modem that we have seen in more than one TV ad for more than one country in the Arab World since 2 years.

I wish that Zain will not work under the umbrella of Orange anymore to provide the internet connection as we were really suffering especially for the last 2 weeks.

In the newspapers today, I saw promotions for both Orange and Zain about this amazing new service that came out of the blue.

“Ya3teek el 3afyeh…”
“Ahlain…”
“Bs bedi as2alak, momken te7kilna kif 7asalt 3ala waziftak?”

That is the first part of the radio promotion that most of you heard on Play 99.6 FM or Rotana 99.9 FM. Today the Akhtaboot team is proud to introduce Akhtaboot himself in his first live appearance to the public in this animated video:

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Al Ghad newspaper was very proud to announce few days ago that we have in Jordan around 92,000 ADSL accounts! Yes we have a lot of internet user, but I bet that all of those users are being cheated in a very dirty way!

I used to have an ADSL account with Orange ADSL; it was 128kbps account at the first stage. I don’t know if Orange is underestimating our abilities to calculate that 128/8 equals 16; which means that I must get a speed of 16KB/s of download. The speed has never exceeded 9KB/s on this account. I kept calling them asking about that issue and they used to answer me with a variety of reasons: “the line is under maintenance”, “you are sharing this line with a lot of people (as if it’s my problem)”, “maybe it’s a temporary problem and it will be fixed very soon”, “you have a problem with your computer”, and a lot of similar answers.

Few months later; after suffering for a long time at home and at my office I decided to fix this issue. I needed a high speed connection (I had one from Orange at the office and it was a disaster also). When I moved to a new company where they are using Zain (Fastlink formerly) as an ISP; I called them and got a new offer for a new high speed connection.

Diffidently everybody knows that the internet connections here in Jordan are all provided from Orange (Jordan Telecom Group). Few weeks after starting to use my new ADSL account; the same problem came out again. I kept calling the ISP and they always say the problem from Orange, and when I call Orange they always say it’s the ISP!

Now, the technical staff at Orange has found another way to evade the fact that they can’t stand that number of ADSL users.

Don’t be proud that we have that much of ADSL users in Jordan. Because you are just saying that 92,000 people and companies are being cheated “3ainak… 3ainak”.