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Telcos call time on the recession

February 24, 2010 6:32 by Ben Flanagan

The UAE mobile operator du today reported a 155 percent surge in mobile subscribers, and an increase in net profit before royalty payments from AED8 million in 2008, to AED528 million last year. The company’s revenue grew to AED5.3 billion, a 35 percent increase on 2008, it said.

The results mark further evidence that the UAE telecoms sector has come of age.

There is now an average of as many as 2.4 mobile phone lines per person in the UAE – the highest penetration in the world, according to a recent report in The National.

While 2.4 SIM cards per person sounds a lot, experts predict even more growth in mobile penetration. Except that, in the future, the cards will be for machines, not people.

“There is much more of a market with machine-to-machine,” Mohammed Omran, the chairman of Etisalat, told The National. “Your car communicating, parking meter reading, electrical meter reading, water meter reading – these are machines that can relay data. These are machines that need to communicate with other machines. This is why I think there’s much more market, not only in the UAE.”

Shares in du, which is listed of the Dubai Financial Market (DFM), have soared by 46.91 percent over the last 12 months, against a 1.27 percent loss on the DFM General Index. Abu Dhabi-listed Etisalat is up 7.24 percent compared with this time last year, significantly less than the 16.28 percent gain made by the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange index.

Osman Sultan, chief executive of du, was bullish about the telco’s future at a results announcement earlier today.

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Tags: broadband, Du, Etisalat, internet, mobile phones, mobiles, telecoms, UAE