Telecommunications in the United Arab Emirates

[2] And while there were exceptions for free zones and modern housing developments, for the majority of the UAE, Etisalat held a monopoly on business and personal telecommunications services.

[2] Earlier du provided triple play services to free zone areas under the name Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), which is still its legal name.

As of February 2014, independent radio stations in the UAE include 7 each in English and Hindi, 12 in Arabic, 4 Malayalam, and one each in Tamil, Tagalog, Russian and Persian.

The country's ISPs Etisalat and du (telco) ban pornography, politically sensitive material and anything against the perceived moral values of the UAE.

[21] [22] In March 2020, amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the government of UAE introduced a partial relaxation of the ban on VoIP services to ease communication during the lockdown.

Popular instant messaging applications that remained blocked despite the removal of the ban on VoIP services included WhatsApp, FaceTime, and Skype.

The selective relaxation of the ban narrowed down the user’s choice to premium (paid) services, owned by state-run telecommunication firms.

On the du network, users who try to access a blocked web page are redirected to du's block page.