AMBITIOUS PLAN: An Etisalat store in Dubai. Most Middle Eastern mobile phone subscribers are on pre-paid contracts typically topped up with scratch cards sold everywhere from petrol stations to local stores, so vouchers for the online platform might easily be rolled out alongside them. — Reuters
DUBAI: Middle East telecommunications firms are discussing the idea of creating a pan-Arab online platform that would earn them more revenue from their networks by challenging Facebook and other Internet behemoths of the West.
The ambitious project faces technical and financial obstacles and may never be implemented on a large scale. But proponents argue the common language and culture shared by the world’s more than 350 million Arabic speakers, plus the webs of affiliated companies which Gulf operators own across the Middle East and North Africa, could make the project viable.
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