Want to change mobile phone company without losing your number? According to the head of the UAE telecoms regulator consumers in the Emirates should be able to do this by the end of March.
Mohamed al Ghanim, the director general of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, said that "mobile number portability" (MNP) will be ready for consumers to use by the end of first quarter of 2011.
MNP lets customers change mobile operators without paying for a new phone number. The service is widely used in North America and Europe.
"It will stimulate competition between the two operators. Every operator will try to hold onto their customers," Mr al Ghanim said on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi Innovation Forum this morning.
Mr al Ghanim had said previously that MNP would be available in the UAE by the end of last year. He did not disclose why the service has been delayed.
"Both operators will declare readiness by the end of the month and we will test it as the TRA within next week," said Mr al Ghanim.
"Then, we will see if the operators will be ready or not ... It doesn't mean that it is ready until we say that is ready. "
Last February, multiple sources told The National that several technical issues between the TRA and the UAE's telecoms operators Etisalat and du pushed the service's rollout from an expected launch of the first quarter of last year.
dgeorgecosh@thenational.ae
What is an ETF?
An exchange traded fund is a type of investment fund that can be traded quickly and easily, just like stocks and shares. They come with no upfront costs aside from your brokerage's dealing charges and annual fees, which are far lower than on traditional mutual investment funds. Charges are as low as 0.03 per cent on one of the very cheapest (and most popular), Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, with the maximum around 0.75 per cent.
There is no fund manager deciding which stocks and other assets to invest in, instead they passively track their chosen index, country, region or commodity, regardless of whether it goes up or down.
The first ETF was launched as recently as 1993, but the sector boasted $5.78 billion in assets under management at the end of September as inflows hit record highs, according to the latest figures from ETFGI, a leading independent research and consultancy firm.
There are thousands to choose from, with the five largest providers BlackRock’s iShares, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisers, Deutsche Bank X-trackers and Invesco PowerShares.
While the best-known track major indices such as MSCI World, the S&P 500 and FTSE 100, you can also invest in specific countries or regions, large, medium or small companies, government bonds, gold, crude oil, cocoa, water, carbon, cattle, corn futures, currency shifts or even a stock market crash.
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
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Shower or bath after being outside.
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Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
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What is graphene?
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.
It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.
But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties.
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