The eternal feud between the Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and Mobily will never end apparently.
Starting this Ramadan Mobily has aired some ads showing their Mobily Broadband @ Home service. This ad shows a person installing a DSL land line, happily saying “they are finally installing the Internet”, he did not say “finally” but his expressions show that he is happy that he finally got his DSL Internet connection (from STC).
This second ad is about the wireless features of the modem, it reminds me of the good old days of dial up modems (oh wait, STC DSL still feels like a dial up modem sometimes). The third ad shows people screaming in frustration with their disconnected Internet connections (something I am sure everyone in Saudi Arabia has experienced).
So on September 6th, STC has aired a counter advertisement which ironically airs at the same time as Mobily ads:
The ad clearly copied how Mobily customer care desks looked like, the blue square logo on the modem and how the modem looked. The customers were trying to get a good signal by extending the modem out of the window. The guy using STC’s service said “they got screwed”.
I am no fan of Mobily; their billing system is inaccurate and they are ruining the iPhone 3G/3GS experience in Saudi Arabia (I got into the details at SaudiMac). STC isn’t any better; Mobily is truly the lesser evil of the two.