31 Comments

• raven45678

  5 years ago

  Its a revenue generation tool for the government plain and simple. And a tax on the population. Though citizens do get better packages at cheaper prices. Also easier to filter and control content when you own the telcos. Little difficult to do that when its an international company.

• raven45678

  5 years ago

  How much do you pay ?!? What plan is this.

• [deleted]

  5 years ago

  Because what can consumers do? Nothing. It's a monopoly; they can charge the price they want because there is no alternative. And starting a petition or something won't help either, someone tried to do one on change.org for the blocking of VoIP services, and they went ahead and blocked change.org completely.

• dharmabird67

  5 years ago

  Same as the taxi companies. In the US those awful Al Ghazal minibuses to Al Ain wouldn't be allowed to run and we would have decent bus services like Megabus and Bolt Bus. Here if you don't drive you either deal with those horrible minibuses or spend 300+ Dh one way on a taxi. No competition is allowed.

• dajamtart

  5 years ago

  Monopoly...

• almost_dubaid

  5 years ago

  Good boy Bahrain does not even ban porn.

• WorthLavishness

  5 years ago

  This is wrong. Because truth be told there's no geographic barriers to lay down the network, so the costs of laying down fiber are not much worse than lay down copper in steep areas (let's say Switzerland, Austria, etc). Furthermore, labor is dirt cheap here so that's not really an issue. The only thing I concede, which obviously goes above my head as I'm not a etisalat employee, is that maybe the uplink to the rest of the world has a short bandwidth, but even that is not a real reason for the high prices (just for the low speeds). Honestly, for me, it boils down to competition. You can see this also in some states in the us where there's only one provider, offerings are very bad there. Now, I secretly hope that one day government will see this and order etisalat/du to adjust prices/speeds (or even open the market to foreign companies). This day and age Internet access is crucial for a country's development.

• anotherdxbguy

  5 years ago

  Telecoms here is a direct government revenue generator. Not being snarky but high internet cost is essentially a tax.

• desertsardine

  5 years ago

  Portugal Caralho!

• dhavi666

  5 years ago

  Think the 'mbps' in 300mbps they sell, refers to megabits per sec, where as on ur switch it is a 'Mbps' which refers to Megabytes per sec. So 300mbps they sell is equal to around 30Mbps.

• username120415

  5 years ago

  Internet is not expensive here and the connection and speed are very good and all the customers are very happy and they dont want more internet providers because theres no point in having competition in this field like the rest of the world! /s

• dhavi666

  5 years ago

  Because they hired mr.bean to find areas with no coverage and mr.bean is not cheap.

• dontdeportmeplz

  5 years ago

  Because labourers are known to share one connection among 100s hence the cap. Can't have them save money and send it back to thier poor families back home now can we?

• andaewalaburger

  5 years ago

  Atleast they are trying hard to make it not seem like a Monopoly.

• navisic

  5 years ago

  I want to upgrade from 50 to 100 so Etisalat wants me to upgrade to the sports pack and then add the speed booster which is fine. What I am not fine with is they are removing my free current Asia pack and will charge me 40 bucks for it. Atrocious. 20 to 50 is 100 AED with speed booster 50 to 100 is pack upgrade and add speed booster costing about 200 AED of increase and renewal of the contract.

• lambardar

  5 years ago

  high overheads & no real competition. Its been 4 months since etisalat upgraded my fiber from 100mbps to 300mbps. the fiber router they provide has a 100mbps port. the customer care guys don't understand or just don't care.

• [deleted]

  5 years ago

  [deleted]

• DXB_DXB

  5 years ago

  U don't make sense. Probably that's why.

• salluks

  5 years ago

  Singapore is a smaller country with a smaller population. They get 300 Mbps for the same price we get 12 Mbps.

• gutterandstars

  5 years ago

  Where's home ?

• LiveInMyOwnWorld

  5 years ago

  I live in construction company's accommodation , neither etisalat or du , accepted to give us elife connection there ! best they gave was 4G sim card with 300GB for 300dhs .

• PatrolInSand

  5 years ago

  were built top heavy Yep, and most wear White or Black ... and seem to be absent most of the days.

• PatrolInSand

  5 years ago

  Aren't both Etisalat and du both parts of "Emirates Telecommunications Corporation", it has a significant ownership in them?

• StripedSocksMan

  5 years ago

  Not only is it expensive, its also super slow and I pay for the fastest connection. I think it about on par with what I had back home in late 90s.

• TenFoldMassacre

  5 years ago

  (its almost as if the government this to happen

• sandysaul

  5 years ago

  The truth of the matter is more prosaic. The UAE currently has one of the best laid out fibre optic networks. For a relatively small country, this comes at a high cost per user. While this will come down, there is still a lot of expansion that's left as new areas constantly come online. Add to this, there are management issues (at least a few years ago) where new teams were built top heavy and most services were outsourced. Maybe I'm simplifying but would love to be proven wrong. Edit: spelling

• asianmexican

  5 years ago

  I dont get how everyone says its a monopoly. are du and etisalat owned by a single entity? what about the lesser known providers, swyp, virgin among others

• BrokenBarbell

  5 years ago

  The game of monopoly.

• firefiber

  5 years ago

  Consumer Protection Department. Located right next to the Unicorn Adoption Center.

• cyberkada

  5 years ago

  Have to pay for the happiness inducing firewall

• Duglitt

  5 years ago

  Dude it's a monopoly pretty much. They can charge so they will charge.