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52
1-800-WATCHES
Old Ma Bell
Comes To Israel
AT&T is hoping to cash in on the recent
liberalization of the telephone equipment market.
ALLISON KAPLAN SOMMER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
S
ay "AT&T" to any Ameri-
can and it will elicit a
stream of associations and
memories — sentimental
television commercials encour-
aging them to make long-distance
calls to loved ones, and the well-
worn company telephones they
grew up with in their homes.
But say the name to an Israeli
and you are likely to get a blank
stare.
The lack of name recognition
is an obstacle for the U.S.-based
international communications
company and the
new Israeli com-
pany, Americom,
formed to distrib-
ute its telephones,
answering ma-
chines, modems
and other tele-
phone products.
It won't be easy.
For decades, the
Israel Communi-
cations Ministry
strictly controlled
the types of tele-
phones that could
be sold. All equip-
ment had to go
through a lengthy,
painstaking and
expensive ap-
proval process that
few companies
were willing to un-
dergo. Therefore,
upscale, high-qual-
ity telephones with a number of
functions and cordless phones
have traditionally had one name
in Israel: Panasonic.
But that has changed over the
past year. Walk into one of the
big office superstores and you will
see a variety of telephones. And
the company launching the
widest-ranging and highest-pro-
file dive into the local market is
AT&T.
"We hadn't entered the mar-
ket to date because of a variety of
technical issues," explained Mag-
nus Kelly, Middle East and Africa
regional manager for the compa-
ny's Multimedia products divi-
sion. "There was insistence on
running various tests — pre-
sumably for safety reasons — be-
fore allowing equipment to
connect to the network."
He noted there has been a ma-
jor change in the Communica-
tions Ministry's approval policy,
which has allowed AT&T to bring
its products into Israel and have
them approved for use here.
"Up until this year, really, the
situation with type approval was
so complex and so protective to
home industries that it wasn't re-
ally viable for AT&T to pour any
resources into the market. (But)
now it's a very viable market and
it's one in which we look forward
to a certain amount of success,"
he said.
But in order to succeed, the Is-
raeli customer has to know who
they are.
Mr. Kelly, who is based in
Bahrain and in Great Britain,
said market sur-
veys show there is
very low aware-
ness of the brand
name AT&T in Is-
rael.
The awareness
that existed was
associated with
the service-pro-
viding side of the
company — and
not with the
equipment it sells.
"I think the
time is right for
our entry for a
number of rea-
sons," Mr. Kelly
said. "The Israeli
market is clearly
well-developed,
consumers are
well-educated,
and they under-
stand the benefits
of modern technology related to
telecommunications. An easy ex-
ample of that is the use of an-
swering machines. There are
countries where people will hang
up before leaving a message on a
machine. Here the benefits are
well-understood — there is an as-
sumption people do have a ma-
chine and messages are left."
The range of telephones and
answering machines spans from
the most simple to the most fu-
turistic. On the less expensive
end, Americom has brought in
the standard sturdy touch-tone
Trimline phone with rounded cor-
ners (locally referred to as a
"sandwich" phone).
"Americans know this phone
is so tough, that if you want to get
rid of it by breaking it, you have
to kick it across the room," said
Abraham Kalfus, Americom gen-
eral manager. "So we're talking
reliability."
Then there are the more so-
phisticated phones that require
a careful study of the manual.