In a move to promote the use of the Internet within the United Arab Emirates (UAE) governmental, business and education sectors, Emirates Internet and Multimedia (EIM), the Internet service provider (ISP) arm of Etisalat, recently announced a substantial reduction in rates of its Internet Dedicated Access Service, a press release reported.
“The new rates reduced by over 50 percent, the lowest for leased lines in the Middle East, are effective from May 1 2002. For example a 128 kb per second access rate will now be priced at 2,900 Emirati dirhams monthly compared to the existing Dh 7,000,” stated General Manager of Emirates Internet and Multimedia, Maroua Naim.
The new price has been introduced by Emirates Internet and Multimedia (EIM) to make continuous high-speed Internet connection services more accessible to businesses, schools and universities throughout the UAE. The new pricing became viable after the significant drop in the cost of international Internet bandwidth and the cost of developing the underlying infrastructure.
EIM’s Internet leased line access service was first introduced in 1995 and developed to address the particular requirements of government, businesses and educational institutions. Subscribers are each assigned dedicated lines that offer continuous Internet access, without the need for dial-up, and given the flexibility of choice from a range of access speeds at different charges. The service is an effective way for organizations to have multiple internal users online, to run their Internet servers from their own premises, and build a Wide Area Network (WAN) linking two or more remote offices or campuses via the Internet.
The subscriber portfolio for Internet leased lines in the UAE has so far predominantly consisted of large organizations that heavily depend on the Internet for business transactions. However, with the new pricing, the service will become more affordable to small and medium sized organizations and will enable employees, customers, students and faculty to fully exploit the advantages of the Internet.
Emirates Internet and Mutimedia (EIM) is the ISP arm of Etisalat and was launched in 2000. EIM created BusinessOne and Al Shamil, the high-speed Internet connections, online registration and ‘dial ‘n’ surf’. Today EIM has more than 200,000 customers placing the UAE in the top 20 most wired countries in the world. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
