i.imgur/iwsnnN2.jpg Since ive been receiving few crys and help over their VIBER, and after hours of hours figuring out for the rest of the OFW regarding to their VIBER. I finally found out why your VIBER is not working (And great news I have a solution for you guys that are currently working in SAUDI, just message me for the solution) At the moment here is the news regarding to that matter ( Dont you just love yall TIG STAR? ) MANILA, Philippines — For 25-year-old nurse Angela Casiano, the popular messaging app Viber was one of the few things that linked her back to the Philippines since she left the country to seek greener pastures in Saudi Arabia in October of 2012. The app, which allows her to chat and place voice calls with relatives back here, has become popular not only in countries like the Middle East, but across a hundred more countries as it circumvented traditional SMS and international call charges imposed by telecom operators. Unfortunately for Casiano, Viber was recently banned by Saudi Arabia’s telecom regulator for not adhering to the agency’s strict but vague regulations, and for competing with duly licensed telecom companies. “I’ve been using it every day to communicate with my loved ones in the Philippines,” she said. “I use it because it’s much cheaper and accessible, and most of my workmates here also use the application.” Casiano was not alone in her frustration. Over at the Facebook page of PEBA, Inc. (Pinoy Expat/OFW Blog Awards), an online community of OFWs, migrant workers voiced out their complaints and lashed out at the Saudi Arabian government for blocking the use of such an important tool, particularly for Overseas Filipino Workers residing in the country. The post announcing the ban had already attracted hundreds of comments from fuming Pinoy workers in Saudi, and had already been shared on Facebook more than a thousand times. “Diyan na nga lang nakakatipid ang mga OFW para makausap ang mga mahal sa buhay, na-ban pa,” said one commenter. “Kaya pala hindi na kami makapag-usap ng hubby (husband) ko,” chided another. While they can’t do anything about the ban for now, others, like Casiano, had already started looking for alternative means to contact their families in the Philippines –such as other messaging apps like Skype and WeChat, or via social networking sites such as Facebook. Similar bans But OFWs currently working in Saudi Arabia may have to think of more ingenious ways to circumvent government regulation in order to keep in touch with relatives back home, as the country’s telecom regulator had earlier indicated that it would be blocking similar applications that do not abide by their stringent requirements. These requirements, however, have yet to be made public, but the regulator had already issued a vaguely worded directive in March warning that such tools as Viber, Whatsapp and Skype broke local laws, without specifying how. In the past, the same government body had already banned the use of BlackBerry’s popular Messenger chat application in the country as the smartphone maker’s complex encryption method made it hard for the government to monitor content flowing through the networks. The ban was only lifted after the Canadian phone company relented to the Saudi Arabian government’s requests, among which the installation of a dedicated server located within the Middle Eastern country. Competition from ‘over-the-top’ players The other potential reason for the ban as cited by reports is the rising competition between telco players and Internet services, a trend which has actually been gaining traction in the past few years. In the Philippines, the trend is more apparent as the move from traditional SMS and voice call communication is slowly being edged out by telco revenues coming from mobile data connections. “That’s the reality of the digital world today,” said Ramon Isberto, Public Affairs Head at Smart Communications, in a phone interview with InterAksyon. “In fact, our International Direct Dial (IDD) revenues have been declining, and we see this as a long-term trend.” Isberto further pointed out that the largest carrier of voice calls today is not even a telecom network but Skype, a technology upstart gobbled up by software giant Microsoft in 2011. As for chat applications, research firm Ovum previously estimated that as much as $25 billion in SMS revenues were lost from telcos worldwide due to “over-the-top” (OTT) players, such as Skype and Viber. “Internet services are really a source of competition for telcos, that’s why the telecom landscape today is more volatile than it was 20 years ago,” Isberto said. To compensate for the loss, Isberto said Smart is carving new revenue streams — particularly in the realm of broadband and content creation & aggregation — that would ensure the company’s survival amid increasing competition from a number of sources. “We’re a multiplatform company, we have both fixed and mobile connections, so we are able to take advantage of our infrastructure in order to offer a wide range of services, both legacy and new ones,” he added.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Jun 2013 05:47:27 +0000
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