latest technology in order to remain competitive in the global economy. That latest technology then allows for other actors to become involved. While Saudi Arabia has decided to limit access to universities, hospitals, and some businesses, it is unable to completely control what individuals do, and what happens in those institutions when they go online.
Let us look briefly at the extent of the problem by 1994. There are several sources of data communication impacting Saudi Arabia. Arab.net is the resource currently most under control of the Kingdom. It limits access to businesses which are approved for usage after review of their applications. Nonetheless, even on Arab.net, the user is able to jump to countries covered within arab.net, and from there, to information that is not controlled by the government or arab.net itself.
In addition, also available in the Arab world is an on line service called Arabia On Line. This service was the first Middle Eastern on line service, started in Dubai in 1995. It was designed to provide exclusive information to Arab and international users who want to obtain business and cultural information on the Arab world. Arabia on line is available directly through the Internet on the World Wide Web and does not require any special software to access it except for ordinary web browsing software. In other words, it is very accessible. Indeed, as part of it, an Arabic CyberCafe will be developed which will allow users to meet and exchange ideas and information with other users from all over the world (Abunab, 1995).
Individual users, businesses, and agencies also have access to other countries directly through the Internet and World Wide Web. The London Financial Times (1996) provided a graph of usage of telecommunications between developing countries in 1994. Saudi Arabia was involved with several of the top traffic routes, logging 147.78 million minutes with Egypt, 95.45 million min...