Surprise, Surprise

Well I'm back at Starbucks again - in the ibn battuta mall http://www.ibnbattutamall.com/ . I'm surfing the Net which is being provided by the newest of the 2 phone / Internet companies in the UAE. It's just recently that they allowed competition against the incumbent phone company. Kind of like Ma Bell in the States before they were disbanded? Deregulated? or whatever happened when the government broke them up way back when (yes I am too young to remember).

Anyway, I wanted to check something, when I downloaded Skype to my laptop I sent the link to Sammy he sent me a note back saying that it was a forbidden website. Hmmm. I thought that was interesting because I can't think of a reason why the UAE would be morally or religiously against talking on the phone over the Internet. Turns out the old company is blocking out their competition! Smart if you don't want to lose business, but really frustrating if you're trying to find a cheap way to communicate to the world.

So having found out that the blocks aren't always due to moral or religious reasons, I logged onto Facebook while using the Du network to see if the Mood Indicator application worked. And guess what?! It's not blocked when using the new company. Guess which Internet company we're going with....