Etisalat trying to negotiate content restrictions regarding tablets with networks

Etisalat will soon offer internet TV on tablets and computers, the telecom company announced Thursday.

Rashid Majid Al Abbar, vice-president of Home Products Marketing for etisalat, told the company’s ‘eLife’ package would be on offer by October.
“We are looking at opening up our eLife TV to other multiple screens as we have a lot of content on hand,” he said.

Al Abbar said that etisalat was trying to negotiate content restrictions regarding tablets with networks. Once these get resolved, eLife would run on Apple and Android platforms, either on a data package outside the home or WiFi.

Currently eLife is only offered on fixed home broadband through fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) service.

“More than 50 per cent of our customers are on the fibre optic network and the rest on the copper network. We have more than 700,000 customers on the fibre and copper network, of which more than 400,000 are on the fibre optic,” he said.

Abu Dhabi is 100 per cent fibre optic while Dubai is around 60 per cent. More than 80 per cent is covered by the fibre optic network in the UAE. Earlier this year, research conducted by FTTH Council Europe ranked the UAE second globally in terms of deployment of fibre optic, ahead of all the major developed economies.

Al Abbar said that the UAE is number two in the world with a 56 per cent penetration rate. South Korea is ranked number one with 58 per cent.

Aggressive plan

“[Hopefully] before the end of the year we will become number one by overtaking South Korea as we have an aggressive plan,” he said..

Eisalat has forged a tie-up with a French company to launch a media phone for home network in the UAE by the end of the year.

Al Abbar said, “It has internet browsing, applications and you can get latest news and HD voice quality. Even in mobile phones you don’t get HD quality. It will be launched before the end of the year.
“We are looking at increasing the broadband speed from the current 30mbps due to huge bandwidth hungry applications like HD and 3D channels,” he said.Etisalat offers 370 channels in 24 languages on eLife TV.

“Our aim is to have 700 channels by the second quarter of next year. Five more languages are expected to be added soon,” he said.

Etisalat added two more high-definition Zee TV channels yesterday to take the total HD channels to 46. “More informative apps will be added to bring more life to eLife TV,” he said.