Payback time
Although pay per minute phone competitions have seen their share of criticism, the games go on. Dena Rashed reports
Ramadan has always been accompanied by a televised advertising bonanza, and this year an inordinate amount of ads were for so- called 0900 pay per minute phone competitions that promised big prizes for the winners. During soap operas, an ad would scroll across the bottom of the screen: "Will the hero marry the heroine in the next episode? Call to win!"
Many people have, and the expected rise in their phone bills inspired many a gripe. MP Zakaria Azmi even launched a massive attack on the service, asking the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology to ban it altogether.
The result has been a new set of rules governing the competitions. According to Sanaa Suleiman, the marketing manager at Telecom Egypt, the national phone company through which the service operates, "as long as the advertising company [organising any particular competition] delivers a serious game that requires a certain level of intelligence from those who participate, then the competition can be aired." To this aim, a ministry committee has been formed to evaluate the seriousness of the competitions before they are aired. Suleiman said the committee includes representatives from advertising companies, Telecom Egypt, and the Telecom Regulatory Committee, and has "the final say on whether or not the advertisement will be approved".
Suleiman denied that Telecom Egypt is making a huge profit from the service, despite the fact that advertisements for competitions seem to air before, during and after every important TV show. Although she did not provide official figures for the company's net profit from the 0900 service, she faulted "newspapers reports that said the service was raking in millions and billions of pounds for Telecom Egypt. The truth is," she said, "with all the partners who share the profits with us, we don't really earn that much money in the end." Amongst these partners are the Egyptian Radio and Television Union, and the service and content providers -- thus, she said, "a 50 piastre call does not end up making too much for us."
Complicating matters is that while most people were under the impression that their current three-month phone bill includes charges made during Ramadan, Ali Ramadan, the head cashier at Telecom Egypt's downtown Ramsis Telecommunications Centre, said phone calls made during November and December are not part of this bill. "Thus many people still don't know how much they're going to have to pay for the competitions they entered," he said.
Amongst the other popular functions of the pay per minute 0900 services are lines providing legal advice, and different mobile tones and mobile logos, the latter having proven especially appealing to younger customers, much to the dismay of their parents.
To avoid hefty bills, some Egyptian families have banned their children from using the 0900 service. Wafaa Mahmoud, a housewife with three children, said she and her husband had enacted just such a ban after being "really upset with the hefty bill I got last time".
Ali Ramadan, the Telecom Egypt cashier, said he had also banned his children from using the numbers, because he knew "how appealing the competitions are for younger children, especially when they ask very trivial questions". Although his kids have not used the service since, Ramadan himself could not resist. "I called one of the sports competitions because they were asking a very easy question about a sports star, and I knew the answer. The call cost me LE7 and of course I never won anything," he said. Ramadan said that even with the large number of competitions during Ramadan, he had never heard of a single winner. "I think these competitions are nothing but frauds," he said.
Suleiman disagrees, saying she thinks it is high time to promote a culture that allows people to make their own choices. Customers should decide for themselves whether or not they want to use this service, she said, pointing out that in other Arab countries, no one has asked for it to be banned, or even limited. She says the attitude in Egypt is reminiscent of people wanting to "hire a personal police officer for every citizen to protect them from making a phone call and abusing the service".
