Al Muntafiq. ©Gulf News |
The initiative is to be officially launched in two weeks.
As for the medium term, the complex has designed a three-year strategy aimed at propelling Dubai as a key player on the global media scene.
"It is city centres around the world that rule the global media, and today it is New York, Los Angeles, London, Hong Kong - dare I say it will also be Dubai tomorrow, which is really the only city in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa and CIS region that currently has the necessary prerequisites," he said.
Addressing members of the Pakistan Professionals Forum on Thursday evening at a function chaired by Iqbal Maladwala, he however clarified that the Dubai Technology, e-Commerce and Media Free Zone Authority views itself more as an industry enabler by providing leading-edge infrastructure capability, rather than itself becoming a media player through news dissemination.
Nor did it view itself as a teleco-mmunications services provider for the entire UAE, although Dubai Internet City was itself the ISP provider for its tenants.
"We will go after six industry segments: broadcasting, publishing, marketing service providers (such as advertising and public relations agencies, and market researchers), music, cinema post-production (for commercial and agency films), and multi-media (such as Web casting and hosting)," he explained.
He added this thrust is based upon three basic premises: IT convergence, with the cellphone of tomorrow 'talking' to the TV channel decoder; the need for access to content; and the country's leadership's vision of attracting talent by building clusters.
He pointed out that the first three industry segments form a strong cluster by themselves, with any one interacting primarily with the other two - and the market here is booming.
"Today you have 150 television channels in the region, with the number projected to go up by another 200 within five years - which translates into some 665,000 hours of production time on TV, as per independent estimates. While this is obviously a tremendous opportunity, on the other hand no broadcaster in the region is today making money, since each has invested in its infrastructure.
"Now, we are offering this strong technological infrastructure, with the costs to be shared. "Again, Arthur Andersen, a consultancy, has projected advertising revenues growing 343 per cent compounded over the next decade - another great opportunity."
He asserted that the media complex has overcome initial teething troubles, with phase one testing already having been completed successfully.
"While the early days saw us fielding charges that the knowledge complex is merely a real estate project, today we are the only one with a fibre-optic link connected to the desktop, the only one with IP connectivity.
"So successful have we been that Phase II, announced in May and due to be completed by April 2002, has already been 90 per cent leased out."
The media complex chief pointed out that several global broadcast and print media players are already based here today, while the big new economy players are also establishing operations that go beyond mere marketing activities, with focus on the back-end of the value chain.
"Microsoft does its beta testing here; IBM has its largest data centre here, outside of the U.S.; Canon has established its regional base; Gemplus, which writes the software on each of your cellphone SIM cards, has pulled out of Bangalore and is setting itself up here, complete with 2,500 knowledge workers."
On the training initiative, he said on the academics side it would include digital graphics, journalism, post-production, music, etc; and on the technology side software development, PC training and allied topics.
