UAE telecom competition: Adventures in Dubai

Keefieboy points out that the competitor to Etisalat is owned by agencies of the government (agencies being given a broad interpretation). And that the appearance of competition is the primary concern since the driver is that it's been made a requirement of being a WTO membership. Secretdubai concurs.

Yet, the threat of competition seems to have been behind Etisalat's abandonment of the new engineering university facility it had built in Sharjah University City. (The facility was transfered to Sharjah and will be used for a college of medicine.) It appears that Etisilat is shedding itself of enterprises that are a drain on profits.