I’ve read in few blogs that Jordanian courts found Fastlink guilty of spying on MobileCom, I’m hearing about this issue since MobileCom started 6 years ago and I thought it is all crap but since it is back to life again seems there is something, I didn’t see anything about it in the newspapers here in Jordan.
But anyway I believe that the mobile operators we have in Jordan are so awful, I remember when Fastlink started in 1995, maybe we were among the first few Arab countries to have a mobile operator but yet it was a really bad experience:
- Very expensive services: The monthly subscription for caller ID was 10 JDs.
- Really bad coverage: Although I live in AlMadina AlMunawah street in a high area in the first floor; not the ground floor nor the basement but yet the coverage was so bad I had to go to the balcony to make a call, I complained many times by calling and filling an application but nothing changed.
- Lack of important services such as the SMS, I think they launched it in 1999, it toke them 4 years to finally launch it.
- Bad customer service: You have to keep calling and calling and putting your mobile on the charger to avoid.
But what happened in year 2000? All of the sudden Fastlink decreased its rates, the caller ID now is for free, they improved their customer service and they started to respect us, but their coverage remained weak, I remember when it failed completely during the snow.
The entrance of MobileCom to the market pushed Fastlink to improve itself, since MobileCom had a stable network since day one Fastlink had to improve its network finally, but MobileCom has the worst offers you can ever imagine, I remember in 2004 they launched a campaign “Beware of qirsh ‘which means shark & one piaster’ this summer” but it turned out to be a complete failure, you can speak for one piaster a minute but under thousands of conditions: at certain time, your credit should be higher than 17 JD’s … and all that crap they but to make you pay more.
The war of prices started and it used to cost you for a minute from one operator to the other more than what it costs for international calls, on another hand Jordan Telecom screwed Fastlink by announcing less fees on calls to MobileCom, which is part of Jordan Telecom group. This is not fair at all, but the question is where the hell the government is!?
Jordan Telecom is a really bad company they drove many ISPs in Jordan out of business for the sake of their ISP Wanadoo, I remember when they decided to decrease the ADSL fees to increase number of ADSL users, Wanadoo was the first to do so and other ISP were delayed so that Wanadoo gets the biggest piece of the cake.
I’m a Fastlink subscriber not that I like them or believe that they are good, but the thing is they all are the same, I might convert to MobileCom if they re-brands to Orange, I like that color 
