Jordan Times
Saturday, September 19, 1998
King's website launched
By Ahmed Naser
AMMAN — The domain “kinghussein” is now taken with the arrival
of the long-awaited homepage of His Majesty King Hussein. Since Thursday, web surfers
everywhere can visit not only Jordan but the King himself.
The King's homepage — www.kinghussein.gov.jo — was designed and compiled over
eight months by a Jordanian company, Business Optimisation Consultants (BOC), and the
Royal Court's International Press Office.
The homepage is apparently the most comprehensive Internet site on the King.
A visit to any search engine on the web will yield no less than 100 results, when the
keywords “hussein,” “kingdom,” “jordan,”
“hashemites,” and “arab” are entered into the search box.
Similar to a museum, the site features a biography of the King, the late King Abdullah and
the Hashemites, the family tree, acts of Parliament, and a catalogue of books, speeches
and interviews in print, audio and video format, as well as a wealth of information on
Jordan itself.
High-end technologies such as Real Audio and Shockwave Flash were used to digitalise the
graphics and audio on the site's more than 400 pages, which are best viewed with the
latest versions of the web's most popular browsers — Netscape Navigator and Microsoft
Explorer.
The site is hosted on BOC's servers in the U.S. for faster browsing and is linked to the
Arab Business Network, a site designed and maintained by the Jordanian web designer, which
hosts businesses from all over the Arab World.
The International Press Office and the company will regularly update the homepage with the
King's latest speeches and interviews, as well as other information.
A section entitled “A day in the life of the King” brings surfers current news
such as last weekend's visit by Royal Court Chief Jawad Anani to Rochester, Minnesota,
where the King is undergoing chemotherapy.
Other members of the Royal family who have their own homepages are Her Majesty Queen Noor
whose site was launched a year and a half ago and is hosted on the National Information
Centre's Amman-based server — www.nic.gov.jo.
Jordan has come a long way in the communications field since 1921, when the Ministry of
Post, Telegraph and Telephone was established.
The King himself reflects on this and is quoted on the front page of his site as saying:
“When I reflect back to the days of my youth, I am reminded of the great progress
that Jordan has made in so many ways since that time. As we prepare to enter the new
millennium, the worldwide accessibility of the Internet is allowing us to transmit
information about the Kingdom to all those who may not have the opportunity to experience
our traditional Jordanian hospitality and heritage in person.”
Major milestones in Jordan's communications history include the foundation of the
Kingdom's first earth station in April, 1968, for international dialling and television
broadcasting.
Jordan was the first country to acquire an earth station to link it to the world through
satellite.
Today the Kingdom has seven Internet Service Providers — Global One, NETS, Index,
FirstNet, ABN, Destinations and JoinNet — five of which burst into the arena a year
ago and now have over 30,000 users amongst them.
There are also around 70 Internet cafes, the majority of which are in Irbid and Amman.
Each of these cafes has at least 10 regulars, while some cafes have become small Internet
service providers with subscriber numbers reaching the mid-500s.
The Internet came to Jordan in 1995, when the National Information Centre, chaired by His
Royal Highness Crown Prince Hassan, the Regent, first made the web accessible to scholars
and students.
The King has always appreciated the potential of the communications sector in Jordan and
recently, in April, he made an earth station run by His Majesty's Royal Communications
— Hashem 1 — initially used to connect to Mayo Clinic in the U.S., available to
Internet Service Providers in the country at rates cheaper than the Jordan
Telecommunication Company, so that these companies would be able to offer cheaper Internet
services to a larger portion of Jordanians, especially students.