Service Management

Goodbye e&; welcome back etisalat

It seems that e&, the brand introduced by the UAE operator with some fanfare in 2022, is no more. e& is reverting to the etisalat name. This was confirmed in an Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX) filing this week.

A brief statement says: “Emirates Telecommunications Group Company PJSC (Etisalat Group) revealed the identity of the company’s 50th anniversary. “Etisalat” is the name we are taking forward – a name that reflects our heritage, our strategy and our ambition for the AI era.”

It continues: “Etisalat means connection. For fifty years, that purpose has guided what we build and the role we play. Today, it carries even greater significance as we bring connectivity, digital capabilities and infrastructure together to enable new opportunities. We will use the below “etisalat” identity in the Group’s communications.”

No changes to plans, numbers or bills have been announced. However, a free anniversary data offer is being promoted to customers to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the business in the UAE. The provider has promised 1GB of free data for every year the customer has been with the company.

As a few news outlets note, the use of e& (although the UAE consumer business was known as ‘etisalat by e&’) was meant to signal a move from a traditional operator into a global technology and investment conglomerate. The 'e', they explain, stood for its connectivity roots and the '&' for everything else: digital services, fintech, cloud, IoT and AI.

The reason for this reversal isn’t entirely clear. The group website apparently still lists subsidiaries such as e& International and e& Capital. No change has yet been announced for e& Egypt or the group's Mobily (Saudi Arabia) stake. The group operates in 38 countries across the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

The group does seem to be in good shape, however, with a recent nine per cent rise bringing second-quarter revenue to AED19.2 billion (about US$5.23 billion) and a customer base reaching 251.5 million. A further boost to its finances came in July when, as we reported at the time, it sold its 16.21% stake in Vodafone Group to Vega, an acquisition vehicle wholly owned by the family of French billionaire Xavier Niel, for £4.4 billion (about US$5.95 billion).

In addition, etisalat has launched a project to expand its digital infrastructure in the UAE and abroad, including plans to lift international connectivity capacity to more than 500Tbps by 2030, which, it says, is over 25 times what it has today. Also, in late September, it switched on a commercial upper 6GHz (U6GHz) network in the UAE.



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