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Emirates Telecommunication Establishment Etisalat
Type Public
Founded United Arab Emirates Government
Headquarters Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Key people Mohammed Hassan Omran Chairman, Mohammed Al Qamzi CEO
Etisalat
Etisalat

Emirates Telecommunications Corporation, also known as Etisalat (former Emirtel), is the incumbent telecommunications carrier and internet service provider in the United Arab Emirates. Etisalat provides all type of telecom services in addition to cable TV service. Etisalat is currently moving to a 3G network and NGN concept in its infrastructure.

Etisalat has been the sole telecommunications service provider in the UAE since 1976 until the arrival of Du (telco) in February 2007.

Etisalat stands 140th among the Financial Times Top 500 Corporations in the world in terms of market capitalization, and is ranked by The Middle East magazine as the 6th largest company in the Middle East in terms of capitalization and revenues. The Corporation is the largest contributor outside the oil sector to development programmes of the UAE Federal Government. Etisalat has also won accolades from across the region for its nationalization programme. [citation needed]

In May 2005, the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority approved the formation of a new telecoms company, which will effectively end Etisalat's monopoly, creating a duopoly. The new $1.1 billion telecoms provider will be 40% owned by the UAE's General Pensions and Social Security Authority and other state interests, with the remaining shares earmarked for private sector shareholders including an initial public offering, which may or may not be open to foreigners.

According to WAM (official news agency of the United Arab Emirates[citation needed]), "At the end of September 2005, the number of lines in service are 1,222,905 for telephone, 4,305,821 for mobile and 4,698,17 for internet. Mobile penetration now exceeds 95 per cent."

Recently eCompany/Etisalat incorporated iZone, a system of WiFi hotspots in central locations, such as shopping malls, restaurants, and shisha cafes. iZone can be utilized by either purchasing prepaid cards, which offer 15 AED/hour access rates (about 4.5 USD an hour), or if they are a dial-up internet user, they can use their previous existing account and pay 3 AED an hour (less than one USD per hour), or if they are a broadband user, they can use their account and gain access for 6 AED an hour (about 2.5 USD an hour).

On May 24th 2006, Etisalat officially released its new corporate logo.

On July 4th, 2006, a consortium led by Etisalat won the rights to develop Egypt's third mobile network, with a winning bid of 16.7 billion Egyptian Pounds (2.29 billion Euro)[1]. The new venture, named 'Nile Telecom' (English translation) will compete with existing service providers Vodafone and Mobinil. On September 12, 2006, it was announced that the network will be built by Ericsson, of Sweden, and Huwai, of China, at a cost of approximately 1.2 billion US dollars[2].

Etisalat is on an expansion spree. After making its presence felt in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and West Africa, Etisalat is prepared to pay up to $3 billion to bid for state-run Algerie Telecom.

Algeria is expected to announce details on a partial privatization of Algerie Telecom by March 2007. The Abu Dhabi-based firm has been expanding aggressively abroad as it has lost a virtual monopoly in the UAE to Dubai-based Du, which aims to gain 30% of the UAE market share.

[edit] eCompany

Although owned by Etisalat,"eCompany" (formally Emirates Internet & Multimedia), provides the Internet for the majority in the United Arab Emirates.

For home users, eCompany provides dial-up connection, ISDN connection, and cable and DSL connection. The Cable and DSL connections are known as "Al Shamil". Al Shamil offers speeds from 256K up to 2Mb.

eCompany was the sole Internet service provider of the United Arab Emirates, but temporarily a second ISP, Sahm Net, which was unaffected by eCompany's censorship, operated in certain new housing developments and Dubai Media City and Dubai Internet City. Recently Sahm was acquired by DIC (Dubai Internet City), although as of November 2006 they were still free of the UAE's proxy. As of November 2006, the new UAE telecoms company, under the name of du (telco) is due to begin operating, although it took an extra 3 months to officially start on the late Feb. 2007. The new telecommunication company (Du) is starting to gain a wide fame with variety of services such as (mobile TV, video calls, video mail, mobile broadband and different billing options)

The dial-up and ISDN connections are billed by the hour, whereas the Domestic/Residential Cable and DSL connections have a fixed monthly rate depending on speed, whereas Business connections are quite legendary for being billed depending on the amount of users and the usage of the connection.

[edit] See also

Du (telco)

[edit] External links

Category:Internet service providers Category:Communications in the United Arab Emirates Category:Communications in the Egypt Category:Telecommunications companies of United Arab Emirates Category:Companies of the United Arab Emirates Category:Telecommunications companies of Pakistan Category:Telecommunications companies of Egypt Category:Mobile phone companies