Dubai Media City starts phone spamming

Sunday 955am. Arrive with hangover at work, the night before was long. My stomach cries for water. Switch on computer, the screen looks blurred, I am soooooooooooo tired. RING RING…..wake up, first client calls. The minute I put my phone down, a Starbucks sign appears on my fancy Cisco IP phone (the same as in the [...]

Sunday 955am. Arrive with hangover at work, the night before was long. My stomach cries for water. Switch on computer, the screen looks blurred, I am soooooooooooo tired.

RING RING…..wake up, first client calls. The minute I put my phone down, a Starbucks sign appears on my fancy Cisco IP phone (the same as in the TV series 24 - which I watched last nite, or until this early morning). What the hell…how does Starbucks knows that I would want a coffee right now? The minute that I am trying to push the CallMe! button, Starbucks disappears and we get an ad for KFC.

Yeah, I am hungry, too. If I wasn’t my own boss, I would have been fired by lunch time for watching my telephone displaying me ads of companies in the TECOM zone the whole morning. Completely forgot about work, and virtually ate Sushi, Starbucks, KFC, Lina’s, Lebo style mixed grill, rented a car from Al Nasr, ordered a couple of Fedex boyz around (playing them against Aramex) and so on.

Wondering why I can not get government services such as Visa processing done via the Cisco phone.

Wondering why I am PAYING for my phone bill (and exorbitant 150 AED per GB bandwidth [we have around 30 GB per month]) while TECOM advertises on a device in MY office that I AM renting and paying for.

Wondering where I signed up for these advertising messages.

Wondering why I can not unsubscribe.

Wondering why they did not use multimedia in their ads, only badly compiled GIFs. How much fun would it be if every telephone would make funny noises while spamming ads on to every one’s desk.

Wondering how to fight back. Thinking of calling them every minute from a different phone playing some ads. Huuu, that would be fun.

Then the earthquake comes. Was hoping that it would hit the Cisco IP online super funky ad spamming phone server from TECOM.

Nothing.

Now waiting for an ad from an insurance company offering earthquake insurance for my office.

The day is over, my secretary is still trying to get those bloody ads off our screens, and I will be using some tape or will just simply scratch the screen if they don’t disappear by tomorrow morning.

I am serious!

comments

Dinesh Lalvani
November 27th, 2005 at 11:37 pm
The colonel on my phone!!! Whats the world coming to!!

I wouldnt mind the messages if Media City gave me discounts on my phone bill or data transfer.

DMC, no free lunches! You want to advertise, ante up!
MohamedElSheikh
November 28th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
Well I was there, right in Martins office when the phone spamming started…3 Ads in 20 seconds…put if we really want to make somehing positive of that, why dont we let DMC put up breaking news, events, traffic information or anything useful as a additional phone service…Hmm, seems AMEINFO will have a new news medium…
Martin Diessner
November 29th, 2005 at 8:46 am
Now TECOM responded back saying it takes approximately one months to take the advertising off the phones.

I assume we get a reduction of our phone bill for one months?

thought # 411

Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don't let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.

Author : Martin Diessner

My passion is obviously my job @ Flip. Trying to balance this by running, mountain + road biking and here and there a game of squash. Favourite destinations: Asia all over the place, and little hide-out in Cyprus and heart beating for Cape Town. Music: Whatever fits on my iPod, and definitly a full collection of U2.

Published
November 27th, 2005 at 10:05 am

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