An Interview With Vodafone

We were recently fortunate to talk to the CEO of Vodafone, Grahame Maher, about why Vodafone came to Qatar, how they are doing here - and how they see themselves as measuring up to Qtel.

Grahame goes fairly easy on Qtel, although he does argue that the company was too slow to respond to impending competiton and that the company's promotions only benefit a portion of their customers.

He also implies that Qtel's billing system is unclear, and that customers feel tricked after receiving large bills.

Of course, Grahame is unashamedly baised against Qtel, but we'll be happy to offer Qtel a similar interview if they are interested. (If there are any Qtel people reading this you can get us on admin@qatarvisitor.com :) )

Click here to read a summary of the interview or here to read the full interview.

Tags

mobile phones qtel vodafone

Vodafone Scores a Point

I think a lot of us have been surprised by how well Qtel has responded to competition.

From a fairly lackadaisical organisation, (one friend in Qtel remembers going to seminars to teach employees the meaning of competition, and described the employees as bewildered at the concept), Qtel have become much more aggressive at marketing.

One huge advantage they have got is a captive market.

After years of dominating the market, most customers have Qtel accounts - meaning that Qtel can and does bombard them with text marketing, whereas Vodafone has to go all out to reach the same people.

Nevertheless, Vodafone has scored a point today.

On twitter and elsewhere users are pointing out that while Qtel has texted users telling them to use up their free minutes by Sunday, Vodafone have just extended their mobile phone promotion till December, giving Red and Freedom users 300MB of free internet usage.

200Kbps a perfect line, says Qtel

After struggling to make changes to the Qatar Visitor website for over an hour, I dialled Qtel and waited the obligatory hour until they could be bothered to answer the phone.

My mission was to upgrade my internect connection. Unfortunately, as I have a Mozaic connection, I am stuck with the standard Qtel line.

(Apart from the internet connection, Mozaic is quite a good deal, actually - check out our review here.)

After listening to me moaning about the problems of building websites on Qtel's standard connecton, the chap on the other end of the line got me to take a speed test.

"So how fast is it?" he asked.

"200kbps."

"That's a perfect line, man - what are you complaining about?"

Meanwhile, this is what the rest of the world says...

While a basic consumer in India is still struggling to get over 2Mbps, Japanese residents will soon be able to upload and download at a speed of up to 1Gbps.

(From Tech Ticker)

That's right, while the richest country in the world provides internet speed at 200KBPs, India's internet users can get ten times that. Meanwhile Japan's internet users are looking at a top speed of 500 times what Qtel is providing.

Now that's a perfect line.

Vodafone is Here

Vodafone is here, and its website is worth visiting just to see the flash intro - butterflies swirling round the screen and an image of the world before the words: It's a Big World flash up.


The company is announcing its entry with a bang. In a brilliant marketing ploy, the company is concealing 500 pieces of a jigsaw around Villagio Shopping Mall tomorrow (Saturday).

Those finding the 500 pieces can take them to the Vodafone store where they get a goody bag and the opportunity to win one of 50 prize packs - including a Vodafone phone.

Then the winners of those will get to help construct a giant puzzle, and get the opportunity to win an all-expenses trip to absolutely anywhere in the world.

Given the publicity that the event is generating and will generate, that trip will be a lot cheaper than it would be buying sufficient advertising to get the same publicity!

Also see:

Qatar Telephones
Qatar Mobile Phones

Qatar Visitor Friends


Tags

vodafone

Qtel's Mozaic TV+ : review

Review and Information on Qtel's Mozaic TV+ package

(Note - this is a review of the Mozaic bundled tv, telephone and wireless internet service - details of Mozaic Mob can be found on the Qtel website.)

Mozaic’s bundle of wireless internet, telephone and television costs just a little more than their telephone and adsl package would cost otherwise. There are two basic TV packages, Asian or Arabic, and we chose Asian as there seemed to be more English language channels.

Most of the channels available on the Mozaic television are available free on satellite television, but you can easily upgrade to paid packages which are quite reasonable in price: 25 riyals for a children’s package, 25 riyals for an Asian films package and 75 riyals for an international films packages.

To be honest, the clinching factor for us was when our US Robotics router decided to malfunction again, leaving us without wireless internet.

Obtaining Mozaic

As usual with Qtel, you cannot order services over the telephone but actually have to go to a service center and order it.

We went to Hyatt Plaza one afternoon as we have found the service center there to be quiet. Sure enough, there was no one in front of us, so we only had to wait 20 minutes before being called by the surly and rude customer service representative. Mozaic was installed two weeks later.

This time the engineer couldn’t be more polite and helpful. Unfortunately, after four hours the system stopped working and it took two more visits by Qtel before it started working again. On the positive side, Qtel did respond promptly after we reported the problem.

On the negative side the engineers were more like the customer service representative this time. The first one left without solving the problem. In fact we didn't know he was gone - he told us he was just going out to check the external wiring and we never saw him again. The second one did manage to sort the problem, but left us with an unsecure network because it was three o' clock and that was his knock off time.

Did I mention that the first engineer was from a company subcontracted by Qtel?

Price

The standard Mozaic package starts at 250 riyals a month. That's what swung it for us, as we were already paying QAR200 just for our ADSL service. Note that the price only counts for one TV set - additional sets cost extra. There are additional pay per view programmes and films, although we haven't tried using these yet. We weren't charged anything for the installation or the hardware.

What you need to order Mozaic

We took along our telephone number, Qtel number, account number, reference number and so on. It wasn’t enough – you also need your eletricity number. When we gave the customer service representative our Qtel number we were told that we were out of range, despite the fact that three of our neighbours have the service. However, after phoning home to get our electricity number Qtel's computer decided that we were now in range.

Hardware

The hardware consists of a large router (Tilgin AB model Vood 453w_A) which is attached to your telephone socket. While your computer connects to the router via wireless, your television is connected to a Motorala set-top-box which is in turn connected to the router by a wire.

Service

We were a little bit worried about reports of flickering and interrupted service, but any interruptions to our service has been minimal. A friend who has had Mozaic longer than us says the service has improved since he first had it installed. After the first hiccup the television set box has failed to work once, but was fine after being turned on and off.

Friends have reported the same thing to me. While it is not a big problem, it would be very annoying if you wanted to watch a program at a certain time, as the top set box does not start straight away but takes several minutes to load up.

One thing that does me is when the television starts up you get the Qtel logo with the same annoying music that you have to listen when you are waiting to speak to Qtel on the phone. However, that goes as soon as you change channels.

The internet has worked smoothly since being installed - in fact, if anything it is faster and smoother than or previous adsl service. The range of the wireless also appears to be good - I haven't used my wireless extender since installing Mozaic.

Conclusion

So far, so good - although we have kept our satellite box in case anything goes wrong with Mozaic...

More info

Ring Qtel on 111 (option 5)

Your opinion?

Have you installed Mozaic? Had any problems, or is it working well? Let us know!

Also see our website articles; Qtel and Telephony in Qatar and Mobile Phones in Qatar

Qatar Visitor Friends

Qatar Jobs

Find the best deal, compare prices and read what other travellers have to say about Qatar

Tags

mozaic tv internet

Qtel

Qtel has just posted profit growth of 33%. (See
Gulf Times story). Customers of the monopoly may not be as happy as its shareholders.

Qtel is expensive. ADSL starts at 200 riyals (over $50) a month. Installation costs a fortune. International rates are outrageous.

Qtel quote: “International calls at a price you can afford”. Presumably addressed to Bill Gates.

Qtel’s service should be excellent at the prices it charges. Yet the internet is slow and sometimes stops, its staff are unhelpful and crossed lines seem to be a daily occurrence. Bills are frequently wrong, and virtually impossible to get sorted.

Qtel is that strangest of things – a telephone company you have to visit in person if you want to get anything done. In fact, it sometimes seems to have more offices then telephones. And those offices are a giggle. They have a reception desk (i.e. your first queue of the day) to hand out application forms that could go in a rack, and give the same information, day in and day out, that could on a notice or in a leaflet.

And, when you finally get your telephone line, can you have ADSL? No, no, no! You have to wait two weeks. Which means that one engineer will visit your house to put in a phone socket, then two weeks later another engineer will visit to take out that socket, and put in an internet and phone socket. Self-install is, of course, unheard of – or rather, un-thought of.

In fact, Qtel looks suspiciously like a job creation and patronage scheme. The last people it appears to care about are its customers, despite the torrent of customer-friendly PR puff that comes out of it. This was really brought home to me while waiting outside a Qtel office. Although it was officially opening time, they were having a PR shoot inside. To avoid looking at the irate people tapping on the glass doors, all the staff turned their backs on the customers and looked inwards.

Qtel loves to boast about its rising profits. However, while it’s not hard to make money when there is no competition, it is hard to please your customers. But why should they care – they’re a monopoly!

Don’t get us wrong. We’re very fond of Qatar, and are impressed with many of the changes this forward-looking and moderate government has been making. But we still hate Qtel!

Also see Qtel incurs customers’ ire on Eid

Update (7/11/06) - the Emir has today abolished Qtels monopoly over the telecommunications sector. Hooray! See: Emir quashes Qtel monopoly.

Also See:

Qtel and Telephones in Qatar: Practical Information

Mobile Phones in Qatar

Another Qtel rant

Tags

Qatar Doha Qtel internet