Fassel flies the flag for du's debut in social networking

Rotana, the Saudi media giant, is providing du with content for the telecommunications operator's upcoming social networking website.

Yousef Mugharbil, the president of Rotana Digital Media, said the company would provide music and videos for the website codenamed "Fassel" - Arabic for tailored or customised.

"We have a licensing agreement with [du]," Mr Mugharbil said on the sidelines of the Telecoms World Middle East conference. "We want to be a full-circuit entertainment company across all touchpoints of media sources."

Rotana is one of the Arab world's largest media companies, with about 85 per cent of the music market. It also has 60 per cent of the film distribution and production market. The company has been involved in a series of deals over the past year that has broadened its reach across digital and telecoms channels. In July, Rotana formed a partnership with Yahoo Middle East to provide the website with Arabic multimedia content and it has tied up similar deals with Meditel in Morocco.

Raghu Venkataraman, the chief strategy and investments officer for du, acknowledged that Rotana would be providing content to the Fassel website but declined to give further details.

"Rotana has been a partner of ours for a couple of years now and they do provide exclusive content with du," said Mr Venkataraman. Fassel is du's pan-Arab digital strategy, a sort of online Mall of the Emirates packed with gaming, music, sport and streaming video. It is being tested in private beta and is likely to be officially launched by the end of this year.

"What I've seen is really exciting," said Mr Mugharbil. "Today, you go to the operator and they offer consumers Dh200 for eight megabytes of data, for example. That's great, but what is at the end of this eight megabytes? I can only go to Facebook so many times, so you need local destinations."

Mr Mugharbil said the exclusive content Rotana could provide would set it apart from other telecoms operators looking to retain customers in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

"Why is the iPhone so popular? Not because they have 440,000 applications but because they have 440,000 destinations," said Mr Mugharbil.

"Likewise, we are working on destinations in our business that has to do with movies, music and anything that has to do with entertainment. It will be on mobile, online and on your desktop."