The Perfect Business Model

I've posted a few times about the Middle East's culture around status... when you and your neighbor both have rolls royces, you need another way to distinguish who is 'cooler'. That's where license plates came in - available to only the upper crust at a rediculous price. And it works... I'm far more impressed by the Porsche 911 Carerra GT2 that has plate '911' than just ANY Carerra GT2. Same goes for the S63 with license plate '63'... I kid you not - people will spend 10x the cars value to get the perfect license (and when the car costs $200k to start with - that says a lot!).

Well... fancy numbers are no longer for only the high ranking families in the region - you too can enjoy the thrills of status, thanks to Vodafone's brilliant grand opening TODAY. Instead of offering much needed price point competition, or fixed monthly rate plans; they are basically an overpriced duplicate of the nationalized monopoly... as you might have assumed since they rely entirely on Qtel's infrastructure. What they do offer is far more important - after you choose your overpriced, pay as you go plan, you get to search for your own phone number. But act quickly - the numbers are disappearing as I type this post.

http://www.vodafone.com.qa/go/en/NameYourNumber

I kid you not - you find it, you can buy it. According to the webiste prices range from Free to 10,000,000QAR (~$2,800,000). I myself went on a quick search - knowing full well that since the number MUST start with a 7 that I could find the 10,000,000QAR number in one attempt. I typed in '7777777' and found the number was unavailable (I interpret that to mean, 'someone already purchased this number, try again'). I then tried all versions of '7######' where # was the same number, and I hit ONLY two as available. At a cost - get this - of 2,000,000QAR (~$550,000). I could have seriously clicked 'BUY' and the numbers 7111111 or 7333333 could have been mine. Looking for something a bit more in your price range: how about 7771111 (which here would read 'triple seven, quadruple one')... a mere 300,000QAR ($83,000). Have a go - you will be amazed at how many numbers are for sale and what folks are paying for them.

Here's the real revelation. This site opened 6 hours ago, meaning that someone has already laid claim to the 10,000,000QAR number, which had to be "septuplet seven" 7777777... and if that wasn't shocking enough, 8 other numbers worth 2,000,000QAR have already sold. You should check to see if you can even get 7111111 or 7333333 later today. I'm fairly confident that setting up and operating a phone number like 7111111 costs no more than 7628769, meaning that the geniuses at Vodafone knew exactly what they were doing when they joined forces with Qtel and passed the extra fees to their users... they managed to make over 26,000,000QAR in less than a business day. To put that in perspective that's almost as much as my company makes every hour in the year (suddenly doesn't seem like much).

If all you had was 5 minutes to learn about the culture Sheri, Aiden, and I live in - just visit the website and experience the madness for yourself. Let me know if you can find a number worth more than 2,000,000QAR for sale (try the fancy combinations - like 7171717... they like those). To be honest the only number worth throwing down would have been the 7x7... so many ways to throw it down.

Thirty years ago, before speed dialing, electronic address books, or remembering your friends numbers... this would have been a nifty feature.

Guy at Honda Service Station: "Sir, can I have your number to call you back - I'm going to write it down right here so I don't forget?"
You: "Don't bother writing it down - it's ALL SEVENS, that's right, just keep mashing 7 until it calls my gold plated Nokia N95 with hydraulics and presidential window tint... ALL SEVENS"

Donald Trump, eat your heart out.