UAE finally embraces VoIP–gingerly
We haven’t made fun of the state of VoIP in United Arab Emirates for a few weeks. When we last left the story, regulators were blocking VoIP service and forcing everyone to use the two legacy telcos. That’s a significant problem in a country with a large expatriate population. Now that VoIP has been pretty well squashed, a top official of legacy carrier Etisalat acknowledges that VoIP cuts into his revenues but says that “you cannot sustain such a ban.” So rather than banning VoIP entirely, regulators in the UAE will simply require that VoIP calls be handled by Etisalat or the other legacy carrier, Du. Maybe that will happen later this year. Maybe not. It seems to depend not on customer or market need, but on the economics of the legacy telco.
For more information on the UAE’s reluctant embrace of VoIP:
- read this article from Gulf News
Related Article:
UAE VoIP ban gets teeth, sparks debate. Report