Nawras: Connecting across the World

“Nawras is very much a people-oriented business”, Ross Cormack, the CEO of Nawras, declares with conviction. “We change our business naturally all the time in response to customers’ needs. They tell us about new products or services they would like or how we can improve our existing products and business. So we react to our customers and that’s where our focus is”.

Rolling out 3G+

 “We employ people to provide customer service to people. As part of that we listen to what people tell us about the services that we should be providing, and a lot of people were saying, ‘we want access to the Internet when we’re on the move, and we want access to the Internet in a convenient, simple and open transparent manner’. So we basically introduced 3G+ to cater to these needs. We have rolled out a 3G+ network over the capital area, in the port of Sohar and the industrial area and in the centres of the next three cities – Nizwa, Sur and Salalah, and we will be building up further this year. Overnight, on the date of launch of the 3G+ services, we programmed everybody’s existing SIM to be able to use the 3G+ network. All they would need is  a 3G+ phone -- that would work straight away and they can make video calls and download internet information or surf the web or send e-mails, and if they wanted to do the same from their laptop they can pop an ordinary Nawras SIM including the one they already have into a *dongle which is a USB device that plugs into your laptop or your desktop and converts that into an Internet access”.

The Pricing

According to Cormack, the pricing is also very fair “because we charge as little as half a baiza per KB of usage per pay-as-you go. We also came up with monthly packages to suit the different types of use. We have a Silver and a Gold package as well as

Pay-as-you-go.

The Silver package is RO 19 and you get 2 GB free data usage included and the Gold package is RO 29 and you get 10 GB free. If you do go beyond 10 GB then it’s still a fair price as we charge you only RO 4  for every GB beyond 10 GB on a monthly basis, and that’s really a lot of information.”

Market Response to 3G+

Cormack finds that the market responded well. Everyone wanted access to the Internet and fair pricing with quick access. So Nawras 3G+ network was designed to meet those requirements. “At the moment we are the only providers of this service in the country”, Cormack proudly claims. “But that’s what you expect from Nawras, people have come to expect a whole series of Nawras firsts, so we’ve listened to customers and delivered new services, product offerings and ways of doing business”, he adds.

The monthly subscription fee is very attractive and it is easy to get started.  He says people opt to “go for a fixed solution or a mobile solution with Nawras. If you go for a fixed solution it can be a bit complicated and can take some time. If you go for the mobile solution from Nawras, you need a dongle. Just come into the store, buy one today and you can be up and running in minutes. So that is specifically what we are trying to do”.

On Mobile Phone Penetration

“The mobile phone penetration in Oman is about 90 percent. So Nawras has really helped to grow this market because before Nawras came into the market 3 yrs ago penetration was around 30 per cent. We started with Zero market share 3 yrs ago, and we now have 42-43 per cent market share. So we’ve got a lot of customers and we are very proud to serve so many customers so quickly. We reached a million customers at the end of 2007 and we had the fastest growth ever in Oman to reach the first million customers.  From the beginning of 2007, I should say we doubled our customer base, we had started with just over 500,000 and we ended with over a million”, Cormack quoted the figures.

Contribution to E-Oman

“On one level we have helped with the road shows that the government ITA has taken around the country, so we have been supporting such initiatives. We are also working with the ITA in other ways. We’ve joined up to a payments gateway so that you can make Internet payments from either your phone or your desktop and pay for your Nawras service. And then finally in promoting access to government, we have 3G + that’s very high speed access to the government e-initiatives. If you go outside the 3G+ areas, every other part of Nawras coverage has a technology called EDGE which is about ten times faster than GPRS. So you still have access to the government’s e-initiatives”.

Distribution network that provides employment Opportunities

Nawras has one of the widest distribution networks in the country. Cormack claims that Nawras motto is “get closer”. Nawras has taken service to where people live by building independent distribution. “First of all it takes our service closer to get more convenience. Secondly, it provides customer service with a friendly local face. So whether you’re in Buraimi or Salalah you’re speaking to people from your own area”, says Cormack.

Nawras has succeeded  in ensuring access to its products as per customer expectations as far as in buying services or paying their bills. Besides this distribution network also provides enormous employment opportunities. He says, “if you assume that every single one of these outlets providing Nawras products provides employment for two people, that means with over 750 points of distribution for the SIM cards, there are some 1500 people who are making a living from this. But we also have 12,000 points of location where we sell our recharge cards. So, this provides better service to customers, it is close to customers and also provides employment”.

Specific and purpose oriented training

“Nawras distributors are given specific training according to the purpose. There are different levels of distribution partnered which require different levels of training. The premium distributors sell post-paid as well as pre-paid cards. People selling pre-paid sim cards need to be trained because there are security processes which are important, and to get somebody activated they are provided with the facts which they use to fax the documentation to us to activate the customer. Then in selling recharge cards, for which people just need to know basically the rules and the pricing and how to re-order, training is given in that as well. Now Nawras is going to have good coverage at Musandam with a Regional Distributor network being built by Mr. Said Al Shamsy. So that will again add another 150 or so locations to this very extensive distribution network.”

Recently, the government has published some papers requesting comments on the introduction of the competition in fixed. And there is also a talk about the possibility of bringing a converged licence. “We have responded to those requested comments, very positively saying that we welcome this initiative and also we’ve made it very clear that we will be interested in bidding for such a licence”, he says.

On Omantel-OmanMobile Merger

With the merging of Oman mobile with Omantel, he explains, “we have our own network, our business is fundamentally to deliver telephone calls, messages and provide Internet access, for which we provide a very extensive network. There is a backbone which we rent from Omantel. We have been building up very fast over the last few years and we now provide some 94 per cent coverage of the population with our own network and its only in the area that we don’t provide coverage we can use our competitor’s network. And our network performance is regularly benchmarked in the top 10 per cent of more than 110 Ericsson networks worldwide. 

On Omanisation

Cormack is enthusiastic about the Omanisation in the company. “People have great education here and they also get good training in several of the leading sectors in our market place. We have 80 per cent Omanisation presently, our target is to get 90 per cent by the end of two years from now. And what we are doing is identifying bright young Omanis, fast tracking them through the system and bringing in trainees. We recommend the potential job seekers to go on our website and send us their CVs electronically as that’s the fastest way for us to process it”.

“We are very active in the community in a lot of ways, in educational terms we have tried to help the students. We have set up SMS booking for tertiary education places, summer school applications and have sponsored a lot of sports activities during the summer. We have an annual Nawras goodwill tour for the local community along with sponsorships for other nationalities as well’, Cormack adds.