Etisalat is the official technology sponsor of the event, where the operator will share its experiences and strategy with its regional peers.
'The ecosystem between operators, manufacturers and content providers is maturing. This means that we are seeing more innovations and services that are now available across multiple different access technologies. This is a new area of growth and the management of and provision of value added services is a major opportunity for service providers in the broadband era.'said Nasser bin Obood, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Etisalat.
'We are proud of Etisalat's Participation in the conference, this conference is about how operators are financing their expansions, and Etisalat has been one of the few operators who have shown positive signs with regards to their expansion strategy. The steps taken by Etisalat will encourage other telecom players to keep moving ahead. Etisalat has once again shown its leadership in the regional telecom industry' Said Bocar Ba, Senior Vice President of SAMENA Telecommunications Council.
In 2008, Etisalat has agreed to partner with France Telecom to take a stake in SoftAtHome. This will enable Etisalat to offer digital home services, and maximize the benefits derived from its investments in fibre optic infrastructure
SoftAtHome develops the SoftAtHome Operating Platform which supports the development of integrated devices and applications. Examples of these broadband hungry applications include Internet radio, wireless picture frames, wireless web cams and more. Etisalat is in the process of completing the roll-out of a nationwide fibre optic network, and aims to connect every home in the UAE by the end of 2011. One of the key project landmarks for the implementation will be achieved in the middle of 2009, when Abu Dhabi becomes the first capital city in the world to be fully connected with Fibre-to-the Home (FTTH).
Bin Obood continued: 'Despite the global market's volatility, we have been able to maintain, and in certain spheres improve on, our growth trajectory in terms of financial and operational parameters. This means we remain on course to achieving our goal of being one of the top 10 operators in the world. Our growth is fuelled by the success of our subsidiaries and through our successful investment in new technologies.'
Etisalat's Chief Corporate Affairs Officer lauded the success of Etisalat in Egypt, where the company won the right to provision the first 3G services in August 2006. Within four months of the companies launch in May 2007, it had secured 2.5mn customers and today services over 7mn customers with a network which offers 2G services across 96% of the country and 3G services across 70%.
Nasser bin Obood also commended the achievements of Mobily which is now reporting 422,000 daily mobile broadband customers who are consuming 34 terabytes of data a day making this the fastest mobile data network in the world. He compared with the UAE where there are 180,000 mobile data users consuming an average of 5 terabytes of data per day. Etisalat in the UAE is planning to introduce a next generation, HSPA+ infrastructure which will enable mobile download speeds of up to 28mbps.