Jordan Times
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Kingdom aims to become
regional ICT hub
By Rami Abdelrahman
AMMAN — For Intel Corporation, an international company that makes $30 billion a
year in net revenues, increased investment in educating and training Jordanians
on the means of developing a future workforce and a future market.
The adequate infrastructure of the Kingdom's
information and communications technology sector, the commitment of the
government to develop this sector to be a main employer for skilled Jordanians,
and the drive to become an ICT hub in the Middle East, are just part of the
reason why the world's largest chipmaker keeps coming up with initiatives and
long-term investment to train Jordanians.
According to Intel's vice president, sales and marketing group, and general
manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Christian Morales, the ICT
sector growth indicators in Jordan are competitively encouraging.
“Seventy per cent of computers used in Jordan are assembled in Jordan by
Jordanians and the Internet and computer home-penetration rate is expected to
rise from 10 per cent now, to 20-30 per cent in the next few years,” Morales
told The Jordan Times during an interview on Sunday.
“We are hoping to help develop a skilled local workforce to be able to expand in
the country and the region,” Morales added, noting that large companies move
geographically towards cheap and skilled labour forces.
Over the past two years, Intel became a main contributor to the Jordan Education
Initiative, established a specialised computer laboratory in the University of
Jordan, trained 15,000 teachers, and is participating in the “PC for every Home”
initiative as well as other events.
Despite the fact that Intel does not have any offices in Jordan, the company
sees itself playing a larger role in developing the country's infrastructure and
has suggested to the government the use of WiMAX
Standards-based wireless technology that provides high-throughput broadband
connections over long distances, to save government spending on infrastructure
and to ensure connectivity in all rural and suburban areas.
“So far, Wi-Fi and cable connections have been used in Jordan like other parts
of the world, but now all major industrialised countries are preparing to switch
to WiMax and we believe this would give Jordan a competitive edge, which can
help decentralise education and training and allow more provincial Internet,”
Morales said. WiMAX provides metropolitan area network connectivity at speeds of
up to 75 Mb/sec. Morales noted that “we see an IT-minded country in the future
when we look at Jordan, and using state-of-the-art technology such as WiMAX
should help the implementation of Jordan's e-government plans in a very
cost-effective way, plus it will allow a developed use of Voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) services,” Morales said.
Founded in 1968 to build semiconductor memory products, Intel introduced the
world's first microprocessor in 1971. Today, Intel supplies the computing and
communications industries with chips, boards, systems and software building
blocks that are the “ingredients” of computers, servers and networking and
communications products.
In 2003, Intel spent $3.7 billion on capital investments to help build
manufacturing capacity and increase manufacturing efficiency. During the same
year, Intel spent $4.4 billion on research and development.