Etisalat Named Best Middle East Wholesale Provider for Third Consecutive Year At Capacity Awards

Amsterdam, Holland & Abu Dhabi, UAE, Sunday, December 19th 2010 [ME NewsWire]:

Etisalat has been named the best wholesale provider of telecommunications services in the Middle East for the third consecutive year at the annual Capacity Awards ceremony which took place in Amsterdam, Holland.


The ceremony, which is organized by Capacity Media, recognized Etisalat’s leadership in providing ‘smart services’ and for developing its portfolio beyond the provision of transit and interconnection.


Ali Amiri, Executive Vice President, Carrier & Wholesale for Etisalat said: “This year Etisalat introduced its ‘Smart Hub’ - the region’s most important hub for wholesale connectivity, applications and content. This facility enables us to provide access to a more sophisticated range of services including our roaming hub, and today our platform allows other operators to establish a network of 600 roaming partners around the world with the minimum of effort.”


Etisalat has established the regional hub for internet traffic thanks to its extensive investment in wholesale capacity. The network continues to grow with the addition of TEAMS cable earlier this year - one of the first cables connecting east Africa, bringing affordable broadband access to millions of people on the continent with the rest of the world. In 2010, Etisalat also announced, in conjunction with industry leading partners, the Regional Cable Network (RCN), which will be the first terrestrial cable connecting the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan Syria and Turkey to Europe. This cable will not only provide extra capacity, but will also add resiliency to regional networks.


Ali Amiri continued: “With a capacity of 80Gigabits per second (Gbps) we have the single largest international Internet backbone in the Middle East. This enables us to offer a variety of advanced services as well as reliable and robust broadband connectivity. We are continuing to develop our network to ensure that we have sufficient resiliency and capacity to provide for today and tomorrow’s connectivity requirements from business, consumers and other operator groups.”


Etisalat continues to be one of the largest carrier of voice traffic in the region and has recently introduced wholesale Points of Presence around the world. Etisalat has also extended its MPLS Virtual Private Networks (VPN) across the region, enabling advanced services for business customers.


The Capacity Awards are organized by Capacity Media and have been created to recognise market players, who through applying effective techniques and strategies to their wholesale businesses, have established themselves at the forefront of the wholesale telecoms industry.


For media enquiries, please contact:

Ms. Nahid Mudathir Hassan

Group Senior Manager Media Relations

009710506006556

nahelsayed@etisalat.ae

www.etisalat.ae