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Session I
Impact of Multinational Presence on the Development of the ICT Sector
This session was moderator by Dr. Sabri Saidam, President Advisor for Telecom, IT and Tech Education and featured Dr. Mashhour Abu Dakka, Minister of Telecommunication and IT. The session highlighted a presentation from the multinational company CISCO presented by Mr. Anthony Vonsee, General Manager for Cisco North Africa & the Levant. Other main speakers included Mr. Ibrahim Barham, CEO Safad, Mr. Maher Hamdan, CEO Paltrade and Ms. Gisel Hiscock, New Business Development team for Google Europe, Middle East and Africa.

The Speakers have made it a point that realistically, Palestine being under the Israeli occupation it will hamper the development of the economy. However, attracting multinational companies such as Microsoft and CISCO to invest in Palestine is a business and an economic decision where Palestine’s government and private sector have to develop its business case.

We heard a formula from the distinguished Speakers that the recipe for developing the business case starts internally. A holistic approach towards developing government regulation such as an independent telecommunication regulator, digital signature, catering for venture capital industry as part of the company registration and investment laws, also regulation for free zone culminating in Technoparks projects should drive an enabling and friendly environment as a first measurement for multinationals to consider investing in Palestine. As a first step to globalizing the ICT sector, the government has to invest in developing the infrastructure such as telecommunication, regulations, physical premises, human capital and in promoting innovation as well as entrepreneurship. continue

Over the years Google has been adding many of the world’s local domains like google.co.uk and google.jo in which case they provides localized search results.
Today Google added google.ps
Yourname.PS is a where domains in occupied Palestine are registered like .com or .co.uk. According to Google Arabia blog post “the new domain will give Arabic-speaking users in the Palestinian Territories, who use Palestinian ISPs, access to Google in Arabic-and eventually, access to more locally-relevant content. With the launch of google.ps, we bring the total number of Google domains worldwide to more than 160. ”

Google confirmed that they will be directing “users based on their ISPs, so users of Palestinian ISPs will automatically be redirected to google.ps. However, any user can type in any Google domain they prefer to go.”
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