Category: Telecommunications
If you’re travelling to the Middle East soon and you want to understand more about Internet restrictions there, read on. Reading this article may drastically affect the quality of your time spent in the Middle East.
Popular Middle East destinations are:
– The United Arab Emirates UAE, especially it’s well known city Dubai. Etisalat is the ISP here.
– Kuwait – major ISPs include Globalnet, Gulfnet, United (UCC).
– Qatar – Qatar Telecom (Q-Tel) is the most important Internet Provider here.
– Oman – Oman Telecommunications Company (Omantel) is having a monopoly in Oman.
– Saudi Arabia – Anet, ArabNet, Saudi On Line (SOL) are major ISPs here.
– Bahrain
Internet service providers of these countries are blocking access to certain websites. Many websites. Some of these are: major news websites like BBC, Deutsche Welle, RFI, some popular music sites, adult websites and discussion forums.
Other blocked websites are also Skype and VPN providers.
Why VPN providers? Well, VPN sites are blocked in the Middle East for a simple reason: if you’d be able to access a VPN site and buy a VPN subscription, then you’d be able to access all blocked websites! Because of the way VPN works, they cannot block the VPN port as it will affect too many companies. And the traffic being encrypted, they can’t spy and see what content you are bringing through the VPN.
This article is most useful to you if you read it before travelling to the Middle East, as over there you won’t be able to access a VPN website. The best thing to do is to buy a VPN account right before you go there.
Alternatively, if you are already in the Middle East and can’t access VPN provider websites, there’s another way to get a VPN account. You can ask somebody from home to order a VPN account for you. Account details come by email and they can easily forward the email to you. Fortunately email is not blocked in the Middle East 🙂
Whether you’re travelling or living in Dubai, Kuwait City, Muscat, Doha or other Arab capital, with a VPN account you can also enjoy the benefits of an unrestricted Internet access!
Want to unblock Internet restrictions in the Middle East? Go to buy VPN account page or the dedicated pages for USA VPN and UK VPN.
You’re just a few clicks away from a no restriction Internet access!
The latest generation of call center software allows organizations to monitor agent and department performance at a level that would have been impossible ten or twenty years ago. However these tools are not just for management use. Call center reports provide valuable motivators to agents, inspiring them to excel and boost the center’s productivity.
Giving Agents Control
When agents become isolated, their performance suffers. A workday becomes an endless series of phone calls. There is no sense of progress other than the ticking of the clock, and the only goal is to get through the day. Morale drops. Service quality drops. Customers become unhappy. It’s a death spiral.
Live call center reports allow agents to see how the department is performing in real time. Phone calls are no longer isolated incidents, but rather pieces of an overall flow of call volume. The agent is not alone, but part of a team. Employees can see how individual efforts affect hold times, queue lengths and other statistics. As the number of calls climb they can put in an extra effort, and as call volume falls agents can relax and take a breather.
It’s Like A Game
Goals are an important element of motivation. They allow us to “win” at whatever we are doing, providing a sense of accomplishment. Realistic and achievable objectives improve employee productivity by adding an element of fun to the workday, without undermining the professionalism needed in the position.
Service departments use call center reports in this manner. Agents work to keep queue lengths and hold times below certain levels. They are prompted to work harder to win at the customer service game. Agents take it upon themselves to work harder when needed rather than needing to be browbeaten by management. This internal motivation is an invaluable part of a productive and happy service team.
Service First
There are two things to keep in mind when using call center reports as motivational tools. First, it’s all about customer service. The reason we want to get hold times or queue lengths down is not that it makes our reports look good. It’s because a caller who gets to a human being faster is going to be a happier customer. However when we become so obsessed with getting our numbers down that we hang up on customers before the problem is resolved, we’ve lost sight of the true goal. Agents still need to provide exceptional service to each caller.
The second thing to remember is the motivational benefits of call center reports are lost when we use those statistics to punish rather than encourage. When an agent is not meeting standards something needs to be done, but reprimands and threats often simply lower morale while providing only a token increase in productivity. Low morale service agents may take their bad moods out on customers. Find a positive way to inspire low-productivity employees to work harder.
There are already clear signs that mergers and acquisitions of the telecommunications industry may rise steadily in 2011 and 2012. Some operators have announced plans to conduct large-scale transactions.
In 2008, before the growth of the global economy slowed down, the telecommunications industry has been in the pursuit of large-scale mergers and acquisitions. But in the subsequent two years, operators set aside most of the transaction to focus on addressing the economic crisis. However, after the two years of the quiet period, many telecom operators become saturated in the development of its domestic market users. In the fierce competition they begin to continue their former growth plans.
They have recognized the limited opportunities to enter new markets. New potential opportunities and the single market opportunities are few. By the merger they will be able to achieve their goals. Therefore, the trading activity of the telecommunications industry may again become active. The next wave of M & A wave is likely to be the industry’s consolidation.
Compared with other industries, the telecommunications industry remains very fragmented. The income of the largest operator accounts for only a small part of the total industry revenue, indicating that this area is in the golden age of further consolidation.
In the new round of growth period, the re-shuffle merger of the telecommunications industry includes three types: first, the large-scale cross-border trading is expected to become the mainstream. Operators who can take the opportunity to take advantage of this integration is expected to become the winner of the global telecommunications industry. They will also have sufficient financial resources and strong organization, including management, business structure, processes, etc.
Second, the merger may be at the market level, including the business combination of the same market. Operators will look for opportunities to acquire the existing business of a competitor, merge competitive organizations. Although this form is not as popular as cross-market integration, it allows operators to increase the number of users, fight for greater market share and eliminate direct competitors at the same time. Finally, the third kind of merger will appear within the operators.
In the short term, carriers will be possible to achieve recovery and accelerate growth through the three types of merger. However, the operator inter-group cross-market mergers and acquisitions may reshape the telecommunications industry. The analysis also showed that cross-market integration is in a upward momentum, while the opportunities of market integration at the same level will gradually decrease.
There just can not be a debate about the respect and awe commanded by the name Blackberry. The kind of handsets brought out by the company are full of the features that are exclusive in nature and treatment. The range of these high-tech gadgets offered by the company is quite wide. Given the experience and efficiency induced by the Blackberry maker RIM- Research in motion it is not even such a surprising thing to note. Among all the superb handsets produced by the company these two, Blackberry 9300 Curve 3G and Blackberry Storm 2 are the names that are in high demand.
So far as the point of Blackberry 9300 Curve 3G vs Blackberry Storm 2 is concerned, there just can not be a very clear winner. But, yes the deals offered by the network suppliers turn them as cheap Blackberry phones.So far as specifications comparison is concerned Blackberry Storm 2 looks quite different from the former one. It flaunts a 3.25 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen that offers a resolution support of 360*480pixels. The camera is a 3.15MP thing that allows images at 248*1536 pixels. And the internal storage memory capacity stands at 2GB.
On he other hand,Blackberry 9300 Curve3G deals is the handset with a 2.46 inches TFT screen that allows 65K colors at 320*240 pixels of resolution. Its full QWERTY key pad makes it easy to use the messaging services. It has internal memory storage capacity that can be expanded to 32Gb using a micro SD card. Along with all thee features the Blackberry Storm might have a little bit of edge, but it is not such a big difference either.
Even the deals offered along with the two are not very different in nature either. Both the Blackberry 9300 Curve 3G deals and Blackberry Storm 2 deals are attracting the users like anything. The most primary deals offered with these two are contract deals, pay as you go deals and Sim free deals.
A report by the Economic Times stated that the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) might soon grant approval to MukeshAmbani ledRIL (Reliance Industries Limited) for carrying out testson its 4G networks.
It has also mentioned that a specific department of DOT, Telecommunication Engineering Service (TEC) has put forward the idea of offering around 10,000 mobile numbers to support its testing process. Furthermore, it has also given a go ahead to InfotelBroadband,owned, and managed by RIL, for connecting its network to other operators wherein these it will be possible for them to make outgoing calls and receive incoming calls using these 10,000 test numbers. This department caters to the research and development of new products and services and is at the helm of establishing new standards.
However, it has levied rules and regulations ensuring that the testing is restricted to specific geographic areas and same equipment is put to use for varied tests effectuated in different circles. DOT has also forbidden Reliance Infotelfrom engaging in offering any kind of commercial services and has announced a definite time for carrying out these testing activities.
While RILclearly rubbished rumors of its tie- up with any other company for offering its voice services earlier this year, it also recently confirmed about its plans of manufacturing its own handsets, in tune with its 4G services. Even as the present telecom policy does not sanction the provision of voice services through 4G licenses, the new telecom policy soon to roll out in 2013, is expected to come as a relief, permitting operators to provide voice services through 4G or BWA, following the deploying of a new framework advocating liberalizationof spectrum utilization, in the country.
A few days back, there were reports of the conglomerate investing $ 10bn on its 4G network wherein it collaborated with Spirit DSP for offering voice and video call services(VVOIP), similar to Skype, in its upcoming LTE network. Thisdeal allows Spirits TeamSpirit voice and video engine to be accredited as Infotels.
Based on the present reports, RIL has set the stage for rolling out its 4G service, in mid2013, in Mumbai and Delhi, initially. For the same, it has embarked on varied collaborations with top-notch companies like Ericsson and Samsung for building its network, IBM for IT support, Microsoft for security solutions, Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd (HFCL) for building optical fiber cable network in targeted cities (Delhi and Mumbai) , where it intends to roll out its services, initially.