Dubai Internet City, which is part of the Dubai Holding, is a tax-free complex, a so-called free economical zone, is an important segment of the Media life of Dubai. The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum has founded the Dubai Internet City in order to improve and enhance the growing Media activity in Dubai and in the whole Middle Eastern region. It offers special offices on its territory that has the characteristics of being a free economical zone for any company, which decided to set up its offices in the Dubai Internet City for a whole 50 years. Dubai Internet City, thanks to its characteristics works in strong co-operation with the Dubai Media City.
Today, Dubai Internet City hosts some international IT companies with key-importance in the global IT business, such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Nokia and all of the local important IT companies such as i-Mate and Acette. Now, Dubai Internet City has about 2 million square meter of commercial office space, in which more than 850 companies employ a number of employees over 10,000 workers.
Unfortunately, due to the current political waves, the Dubai Internet City is not as nice as it seems, it is selling out offices saying it is low–cost, but the fact is that the internet is much more expensive over here. The key is in the additional censorship cost. Together the price of the internet can be even ten times as expensive. The censorship is also covering all websites and some of the social networking services and VOIP systems are blocked. For these reasons, telephone calls to and from the UAE all cost double, triple as much as in Europe or in the States.
The Dubai Internet City has taken over the role of being an IT hub from 2008. From then on, all the traffic has been going through one main censorship proxy controlled by the Security Agency of the United Arab Emirates. The censoring is referring to any content that is held inappropriate. To the dismay of many living or working in the area, the broadcasting and the internet indeed is heavily censored, as all Media activity in the region. The censored Media channels are troubling the internet connection, which is causing problems to all who work in the Dubai Internet City.
For all these reasons, most companies do keep their overseas accounts for the internet and proxy. The internet service provider company of the Dubai Internet City is called “du” or Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company operated by the government of Dubai. “Du” has a total monopoly over the internet in all tax free business zones of Dubai also it has total governance over other Media activity in Dubai such as over the television networks.
This controlling is a natural activity of all the Middle Eastern and North African Arabic countries. Dubai Internet City and Dubai Media City the two bastions of the Media empire of Dubai have key-importance in the daily life of Dubai and the whole United Arab Emirates. Dubai Internet city although not a tourist attraction, is interesting to examine, to see all the difference between the Media of the Middle Eastern and Western countries and culture.