• Director General of TRA, Mohamed Al Ghanim opens up about key topics of broadband, VoIP and the liberalisation of the UAE market
• The forum provides the answers to questions posed by top industry leaders

Proving its commitment to engaging with its valued business customers, du hosted His Excellency Mohamed Al Ghanim, Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), at its second Customer Advisory Board Forum (CAB). The event – the first of its kind thought leadership platform in this region - took place at Atlantis Hotel in Dubai and attracted leaders from various industries to address and discuss key issues and trends in customer behaviour and expectations. As a sign of du’s commitment to listening to its customers, the forum was based on the feedback received during the company’s inaugural forum meeting last June.

Addressing the gathered CAB, Osman Sultan, CEO, du, said: “This forum discussion is very valuable to us. We are proud that the event comes while we are celebrating a new milestone of reaching an estimated 37 per cent market share of active mobile subscribers in the UAE by the end of August and more than 4 million customers, the highest growth of any other telco in the region. This is testament to the strength of our product and service offering, our tailored marketing strategies but most importantly our ability to deliver to our customers.  We will continue to bring the best value that we can offer to our customers and shareholders.”

“The purpose of meeting here today is to share experiences and insights into customer trends and issues from our various different businesses. We need to gather information, discover trends that are taking place and move forward with this. The earlier we do this, the easier it will be to prepare for the future,” he added.

The company had the honour of hosting HE Mohamed Al Ghanim, Director General of TRA, as the keynote speaker at the event, who engaged in an open and interactive roundtable discussion with the other CAB members. His Excellency touched upon the important topics of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), broadband and the opening up of the UAE telecom market.

“It has been proven that having high quality and widespread broadband access enhances a country’s economy and boosts both the private and public sectors. Indeed, here in the UAE, broadband traffic and smart phones usage is higher than anywhere else in the region, social networking is becoming increasingly popular and people are demanding more and more bandwidth. Therefore broadband access will be a national focus for the TRA over the next few years,” said Al Ghanim.

“The liberalisation of data centres and cloud computing will be the next big issues for the industry,” he added.

When asked by the assembled CAB members about VoIP, Al Ghanim said: “Today the world is changing to IP. With regards to internet telephony, only the telecom service providers in the UAE are licensed to offer VoIP services and they have started to provide these services already. This measure is set in place in order to protect telecom customers, as if a company is not registered with us, we cannot intervene or help should a problem arise. We have been working with Skype and other VoIP providers to see if their services could be established here in the UAE.”

He concluded: “I am an admirer of this initiative from du, which is the first of its kind in the region that I have ever seen. du’s CAB forum provides a fantastic opportunity for customers to engage with their operator openly and honestly and get answers to their questions and for du to listen, engage and deliver what people really want.”

du’s inaugural Customer Advisory Board meeting was moderated by industry expert Rob Staples, Global Head of Telecom, Media and Entertainment, Capgemini Consulting. Throughout the evening, a presentation was delivered by Clive Haswell, CIO MENA, Standard Chartered Bank, entitled ‘Key insights into the Banking and Finance industry’. The presentation covered the key challenges faced in building a global IT infrastructure and banking operations across the region.

Finally, Rob Staples, the moderator of the evening for the second time running, led a forum session entitled ‘Listen, Engage and Deliver’, which included a synopsis of areas of interest and interactive session on four key categories. These categories included Propositions, Solutions and Services, Cost of Global Connectivity, Customer Relationship Management and Service Delivery Management & SLA, and stimulated a lively discussion among the CAB members.

Several top industries leaders attended the CAB meeting, in their own capacity, including – HE Mohammed Al Ghanim, Director General, TRA; Rob Staples, Global Head of Telecom, Media and Entertainment, Capgemini Consulting, George Pawlyszyn, Executive Director, Injazat Data Systems; Sultan Karmostaji, Chief Operating Officer, Higher Colleges of Technology; Marwan Al Ali, CCO, Jumeirah Group; Prince Denzil, CIO, Siemens; Clive Haswell, CIO, Standard Chartered Bank; David Horton, VP, IT, Mashreq Bank, and Osman Sultan, CEO, du, along with senior executives from du.