The General Management of a Jordanian Private ISP in Jordan: “Yemen May Be Our Second Destination!” [Archives:2000/16/Science & Technology]

Walid Al-Saqqaf 
As a follow-up to last week’s article titled “When Internet Monopoly Takes its Toll”, here we publish the complete interview with one of the most successful private Internet Service Provided Companies in Jordan. Because Jordan opened the way for privatization of the Internet service, several companies have been operating under the ceiling of a supportive and encouraging government. This is yet to be the case in Yemen. Until that happens, I will only continue to bring the negative aspects of monopolization of Internet Services and bring it to the attention of a potential private ISPs and Internet users to the effort that the privatization law is drafted in support of privatization of media, including the Internet. 
Just as I entered into the company’s apartment, which was on the 4th floor of a deluxe building in one of the new neighborhoods in western Amman, I was warmly received and welcomed by Abdullah, brother of the General Manager who himself was a quite gentle person. Later I realized he was the person responsible for the administration of the company. As I came into the office of the company’s General Manager, we was delighted to find a young man in his 30s welcoming me warmly and introducing me to his brother and sister in the room next to his. 
 
Sami H. Jana is the owner and founder of DESTINATIONS, a 2-year old Internet Service Providing company in Jordan. Being an electrical engineer in the field of communications and digital switching, .. was able to have himself well established in the Information Technology (IT) sector in Jordan. Mr. Jana worked in ARAMCO of Saudi Arabia, and now, along with his brother and sister, run their own ISP, which is serving more than 1,500 subscribers (probably more than the subscribers of Teleyemen), and is ranked the first in speed and quality of service. He as the technical expert and the one who knows every single networking operation taking place, his brother Abdullah, with a degree in Administration works in managing the company, and his sister Hala, as a computer programmer ad up to the team to develop software and web pages for the company. The three form an ideal group of people to found an efficiently managed and operating company. 
To have an extensive look at his company’s achievements and progress, YT met him and filed the following interview. 
Asked about whether he would like to invest in Yemen if the door was opened to him, he answered. 
“Yes I will be glad to invest in Yemen. I know that Internet is not something of an extra feature, it has become an essential commodity in every-day life. It will continue to flourish and be more significant in Yemen as anywhere in the world. So I suppose I will be happy to come and invest in our brotherly country Yemen. As a matter of fact, one should always extend his vision to beyond his scope today. He should look beyond Jordan, and even beyond Yemen for a better opportunity in another place. This is the proof of globalization, in which the Internet played an important role. We have chosen the name of the company to be global and not restricted to any specific place. Whenever you open our website, you would not even know where it is at, because it is without an extension of the country (.jo). We are a company that thinks globally, and who knows? Maybe Yemen could be our second destination!” 
“During the days I worked in Saudi Arabia in the Planning department of ARAMCO, I was interested in the networking phenomena and its usefulness in spreading information. As a matter of fact, I predicted that the Internet would be the information network of the future before it was even available in Jordan. Being a computer expert myself, I was able to realize the benefits and usefulness of the Internet, and was able to use it effectively for my own work. The commands of controlling the flow of information in the networked environment of the Internet used to be through a bunch of Unix commands. Today, it roughly does the same thing, but with a much friendlier interface. 
Not only me, but all economy experts by then realized that the role of the Internet would become a prominent and vital one in the future. 
Initially, I wanted the company to play a role in electronic commerce. However, later I realized that it is more important at that time to found the medium, in which users could get into the Internet, for without that, no one would be able to use e-commerce. Hence, I decided to establish it as an ISP. 
We have gone a long way in establishing ourselves since August 1998 as a prominent ISP in Jordan. We have focused on some objectives in providing our business, which starts with providing quality service with acceptable rates. The rest of the objectives can be found in our website. 
We could not have reached the level of success we are in without the direct support of King Hussein (Mercy upon his soul) and his son King Abdullah. They do this simply because they realize that we need a push forward to be able to match international standards and be beneficial for the public and for the country as a whole. 
To a question about the number of private and governmental ISPs he said, 
“There are no state owned ISPs. However, there are some units that provide Internet services only to governmental offices. These units were not competing with us as private companies, and have not affected our markets. Today, all the commercial ISPs, which total to 16 licensed ISPs, 7 of them fully operational, are privately owned, something that is seldom found in other Arab countries.” 
Related to how companies get their license and begin operation Jana replied, 
“When we applied, to the government was offering licenses for private companies to set their companies, 
It is an evolving process, and the infrastructure of the communication system in Jordan has been there since 1995 under continuous construction and update. Just around 1 year ago, the ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) was implemented and became a built in communication medium. This was a direct result of the demand by Internet users. Today, they are beginning to talk about installing the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). Speaking of enhancing the communication backbone, Jordanian Telecommunication Company (JTC) participated in the global fiber optic network extending through the red sea by establishing a node in Aqaba in the south of Jordan. The network extends from London to UAE, to Singapore to Japan going through the red sea; Hence I believe you have a node in Yemen as well. The link would continue from Japan to the USA which already has a fiber optic link to London. Hence, this would obviously compose a complete cycle of fiber optic. 
It is obvious from the government’s action that they intend to use all the communication tools that would help the country cope with the digital age. 
To demonstrate these efforts, His Majesty, King Hussein ordered the conversion of a special station called Hashim 1, which was used to link Hussein Medical Complex to Miami Medical Complex, to a station used for the linking of private ISPs to the international backbone. Today, ISPs have the choice either to link to that station or to the JTC’s own station.” 
When asked about how ISP can technically connect themselves to the backbone, and hence to the Internet, he said: 
“The Internet has no geographical or positional frontiers; it is open, it flows every where, and one cannot explain it in a specific matter like saying “this is the Internet”. However, if we understand how it works, we will know how ISPs connect to it. The internet is the network of networks, and the backbone, and is the shared part of the network by all branching networks. In developed countries, we would see that telecommunication companies have their own sophisticated national networks. These networks are connected eventually to the backbones which carry the transactions and data to the rest of the world. However, the backbone itself is a mix of mediums that can transfer large amounts of data per second (usually of fiber optics and Satellite.) The backbone is not owned by anyone, but rather maintained by different large-scale international telecommunication companies such as WorldCom (MCI previously), AT&T, Deutch Telecom, France Telecom, and other telecommunication companies. They all cooperated in bringing this service to the world. Eventually it is in their common interest to maintain the backbone because of their dependence on it for all their telecommunications. 
For an ISP, like ours, to connect to the Internet, it must connect through the backbone. We have a national network managed and operated by JTC, which has connected itself to the backbone, as I mentioned earlier, at Al-Aqaba Port, and through other mediums such as Intelsat, which is terminated with British Telecom, and other companies. In this case, we need to link our cable to a node of JTC, which is usually at a considerable distance from our company. In Jordan, we have a committee called the committee for organizing telecommunications. Its duty is to give licenses to ISPs and notify them of the certain JTC node they will be connected to, which is usually the closest to the site of the ISP. We literally enjoy a free market service companies, and suffer from no monopoly whatsoever. Whoever wants to establish his/her own company can try his/her luck if he is granted the license by the government and given the opportunity to do so without any restrictions. On the contrary, the government usually gives extra facilities to the companies such as technical assistance and encouragement.”We stop here for this week, and continue next week with the answer to the question: How easy it is to setup an ISP? 
To be continued next week
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